VIGNETTES  OF  TRAVEL. 


SOME  COMPARATIVE  SKETCHES  IN  ENGLAND 
AND  ITALY. 


BY 

W.  W.  NEVIN. 


NEW  YORK  : 

WM.  L.  ALLISON  COMPANY, 
PUBLISHERS. 


719 

N5"- 


Copyright,  1880,  by  W.  W,  TSTimn. 


HENRY  MORSE  STEPHEN* 


INTRODUCTORY. 


THESE  papers  are  in  part  a  recast  of  some  letters  contrib- 
uted to  the  public  press  of  the  United  States  during  a  visit 
to  Europe  in  1879  and  1880,  and  in  part  fresh  matter  from 
original  notes  then  taken.  The  wide  republication  here  and 
abroad  of  many  of  the  newspaper  letters  suggested  the  prep- 
aration of  this  volume. 

Tie  several  sketches  are  mainly  in  the  direction  of  com- 
parative studies  of  social  and  political  life  in  other  countries. 
The  volume  is,  however,  less  symmetrical  in  this  respect  than 
I  could  have  wished  now,  for  the  reason  that  this  line  of 
treatment  was  not  an  original  plan — the  work  only  drifting 
that  way  in  the  gradual  course  of  travel  and  writing. 

Comparative  study  has  been  the  rule  of  advancement  in  all 
knowledge  this  century,  and  advance  in  the  sciences  of  politics 
and  society  will  best  be  made  by  the  same  means.  We  cannot 
compare  our  own  institutions  and  form  of  government  with 
those  of  other  nations  until  we  understand  them,  and  we  can 
never  thoroughly  understand  them  until  we  see  them  brought 
out  in  relief  against  the  bark-round  of  other  countries. 

In  other  countries  and  in  former  times  responsibility  tor  the 
social  and  political  progress  of  any  nation  has  been  confined 
to  a  small  and  highly- favored  class.  With  us  it  rests  upon 
the  whole  people.  The  education  of  foreign  travel — once  the 
privilege  and  pleasure  of  a  few — has,  therefore,  become  the 
duty  of  every  American  citizen.  The  citizen  is  the  statesman 
now.  If  this  is  not  the  Providential  intent  of  the  flood  of 
European  travel  which  annually  leaves  our  shores,  it  is  cer- 
tainly its  fortunate  opportunity. 

Any  contribution,  however  imperfect,  to  this  comparative 
study  of  ourselves  ought  to  be  of  some  use  to  some  portions 
of  our  people.  In  Chapter  XVII.  of  this  work  I  have  at- 
tempted to  show  that  aid  in  this  work  is  the  most  useful 
function  now  left  to  our  diplomatic  service  and  the  best  reason 
for  its  present  existence. 

Along  the  pathway  of  travel  and  study  I  have  endeavored 

3 

5J 1080 


4  INTRODUCTORY. 

to  give,  wherever  possible,  some  of  that  more  intimate  and 
personal  information  which  every  educated  traveller  so  often 
feels  the  want  of,  and  which  for  some  reason  will  not  get  into 
the  guide-books — the  special  uses  of  special  places,  the  best 
economies  of  time  and  route  and  intellectual  energies,  the  tried 
and  tested  equipment  of  books, — that  kind  of  information 
gotten  only  by  experience,  always  costly,  and  which  to  one  en 
route  for  the  first  or  only  time  generally  conies  too  late  for  use. 

And  in  this  matter  of  information,  a  closing  word  of  coun- 
sel. Much  of  the  higher  value  of  travel  is  often  lost  for  want 
of  some  reasonable  provision  beforehand  for  taking  all  of  the 
advantage  of  foreign  life.  Old  lands,  with  their  endless  asso- 
ciations, have  such  charms  for  the  New- World  citizen  that 
he  is  apt  to  think  of  nothing  but  the  pleasure  of  wandering 
at  will  among  their  ruins,  their  grandeur,  their  unaccustomed 
and  suggestive  sights  and  sounds. 

The  highest  expression  of  any  living  land,  however,  is  its 
society,  which  is  the  fruit  of  all  its  years  or  centuries  of 
struggle  and  longing.  He  only  sees  a  land  who  knows  its 
people.  England,  for  instance,  which,  by  reason  of  language 
and  race  is  the  most  profitable  ground  for  American  travel, 
one  can  only  begin  to  appreciate  by  meeting  personally  some 
members  of  some  of  its  distinctive  and  defined  classes,  and 
seeing  them  in  the  setting  of  their  own  homes.  A  single 
day  spent  in  a  cathedral  close  ;  in  an  old  castle,  with  an  his- 
toric family,  still  its  living  soul,  yet  in  it ;  in  an  English 
gentleman's  country-house,  that  charming  flower  of  a  well- 
perfected  order  of  life  ;  in  the  college-cloisters  of  one  of  the 
ancient  universities  ;  in  a  substantial  farm-house  ;  or,  if  one 
cannot  do  any  better,  in  a  humble,  out-of-the-way  inn,  will  give 
more  insight  into  the  social  structure  and  historical  civilization 
of  England  than  a  whole  cycle  of  existence  in  hotels  or  helpless 
rambling  with  red  books  among  show  ruins  and  over  beaten 
highways.  These  are  the  pictures  which  are  the  real  histori- 
cal paintings  of  the  country.  To  get  a  stereoscopic  view  of 
England  one  should  enter  all  these  doors  and  many  others. 
That  good  fortune,  of  course,  can  only  come  to  very  few,  but 
all  may  enjoy  some  one  "  interior,"  and  from  it,  like  a  skilled 
anatomist,  construct  to  his  own  conception  the  whole  fabric  of 
the  body  politic  and  social. 

PHILADELPHIA,  November  15, 1880. 


CONTENTS. 


ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

"01 

I.— CHESTER 9 

II.— YORK 19 

III.— SHOTTERT 25 

IV. — READING  IN  BERKSHIRE 30 

V. — LANCASTER 36 

VI. — UNIVERSITY  TOWNS:  OXFORD    ....  44 

VII. — UNIVERSITY  TOWNS:  CAMBRIDGE      ...  61 

ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

VIII. — ENGLISH  POLITICAL  LIFE 79 

IX. — GLADSTONE 84 

X. — AN  ENGLISH  ELECTION 92 

XI. — THE  INTERROGATION  POINT  IN  POLITICS.        .  99 

XII.— COMPARATIVE  COST  OF  GOVERNMENT        .        .  103 

XIII. — PARLIAMENT, — THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS          .  109 

XIV. — PARLIAMENT, — THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS         .  118 

XV.— PARLIAMENT,— THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS         .  126 

XVI.— PARLIAMENT,— THE  HOUSE  OF  LORDS      .        .142 

XVII.— FOREIGN  SERVICE 146 

XVIII. — COMPARATIVE  POLITICS 161 

LONDON. 

XIX.— WESTMINSTER  ABBEY 165 

XX.— THE  LONDON  PULPIT 175 

XXL— THE  PLAY  AND  THE  THEATRE  .        .        .        .189 

XXII.— THE  LONDON  TIMES 196 

XXIIL— HISTORIC  TAVERNS 207 

1*  6 


6  CONTENTS. 

SCOTLAND. 

OHAPTEB  PAOB 

XXIV.— ENTERING  SCOTLAND 223 

XXV.— SCOTTISH  NOTES 230 

XXVI.— TOWARDS  THE  HEBRIDES    .        .        .        .238 
XXVII.— IONA 247 

NORTHERN  ITALY. 

XXVIII.— VENICE  .        .        .        . '      .        .        .        .265 

XXIX.— GENOA 276 

XXX.— PISA 286 

XXXI.— SIENA 293 

XXXII.— ORVIETO 305 

XXXIII.— PISTOJA 314 

XXXIV.— RAVENNA .322 

ROME. 

XXXV.— ROME  THE  CENTRE 331 

XXXVI. — ST.  PETER'S,  AND  ITALIAN  PREACHING        .  336 

XXXVII.— THE  PANTHEON 346 

XXXVIII.— PRISON  OF  ST.  PAUL  AND  ST.  PETER.        .  353 
XXXIX. — THE  PALACE  OF  THE  INQUISITION      .        .  362 
XL. — CONSTANTINE'S  BATTLE-FIELD    .        .        .  367 
XLI. — OSTIA — THE  POMPEII  OF  ROMAN  CIVILI- 
ZATION       374 

MODERN  ITALY. 

XLII.— NEW  ROME 385 

XLIIL— UNITED  ITALY ,393 

XLIV.— GARIBALDI 402 

XLV. — MODERN  ITALY 409 

XLVL— THE  ITALIAN  LIPS  .  .  .  .  .122 

APPENDIX. 
HINTS  OF  TRAVEL  ,    435 


ENGLISH    TOWNS. 


CHAPTER  1. 

CHESTER. 

THE  ENTRANCE-PORCH  TO  ENGLAND — AN  INITIAL  WALK — 
THE  OLD  HOME — VITIATION  OF  THE  LANGUAGE — THE 
SOLDI KR  AND  THE  BKGGAR — COMING  DIFFERENTIATION  OF 
THE  ENGLISH  AND  AMERICAN  LANGUAGE — THE  VIGNETTE 
CATHEDRAL  SCENE  OF  ENGLAND. 

CHESTER  is  the  vignette  scene  of  England,  and  a 
very  charming  one.  Within  fifteen  miles  of  Liver- 
pool, and  trains  running  out  almost  hourly,  the  expe- 
rienced traveller  can,  and  the  judicious  one  will,  avoid 
that  monotonous  town  consecrated  to  trade  and  lucre, 
and  spend  his  first  night  in  England  in  a  little  country 
village  representative  and  typical  of  the  most  English 
of  English  scenery.  Indeed,  if  circumstances  permit, 
I  would  advise  that  the  visitor  walk  from  Liverpool 
to  Chester.  It  is  a  short  distance,  over  excellent  roads, 
and  the  walk  will  give  one  at  once  an  idea  of  English 
landscape  which  it  would  take  weeks  of  railway  travel 
to  acquire. 

The  walk  will  be  made  along  green  lanes  and  by 
hedges  and  under  avenues  of  great  trees  which  form  a 
picture  not  to  be  forgotten,  and  answering  completely 
to  what  is,  perhaps,  the  conventional  conception  of  any 
well-read  person  of  rural  England.  To  an  educated 
American,  indeed,  all  England  is  so  familiar  by  pic- 
tures, literature,  and  legend  that,  entering  it  for  the 
first  time,  he  feels  as  if  he  were  coming  home  again 
instead  of  visiting  a  strange  land, — as  if  he  had  beer- 
there  before  in  a  half-remembered  childhood  or  in  a 
dream,  and  were  part  of  it.  This  indefinable  sense  of 
a  previous  knowledge  is  not,  I  think,  a  me.'e  intellec- 

9 


12  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

which  marked  the  fall  of  thrones  and  turned  the  course 
of  history. 

Inside  the  walls,  in  the  "old  city,"  every  building 
and  street  is  quaint  and  picturesque,  and  the  narrow 
ways  are  fairly  crowded  with  houses  that  are  historic 
and  pregnant  with  suggestion.  There  is  the  summer 
residence  of  King  Henry  VIII.,  a  low,  mud-walled 
building,  not  twelve  feet  high,  but  which  so  short  a 
time  ago  was  a  fit  dwelling  for  a  monarch.  It  sounds 
rather  comical  now,  but  there  is  in  Chester  a  charitable 
foundation  of  this  rnany-wived  King  Henry  for  the 
perpetual  support  of  "  six  widows."  The  widows  are 
to-day  enjoying  this  benefit. 

Through  a  brick  alley-passage  not  five  feet  wide 
you  come  on  the  ancient  palace  of  the  great  Earl  of 
Derby,  a  soldier  and  statesman,  who  in  old  times 
headed  armies,  levied  war  against  his  king,  and  for 
that  act  parted  with  his  head  on  the  scaffold.  This 
place  is  a  rackety  structure  of  two  low  stories,  hardly 
high  enough  to  stand  up  in,  and  is  now  occupied  by  a 
family  of  the  poorest  sort  in  a  city  where  poverty 
is  squalid  and  wretched  to  an  extent  that  we  happily 
know  nothing  of.  A  dirty,  red-haired  girl  with  torn 
petticoats  and  a  hungry-looking  face  received  us  on 
the  threshold  and  offered  the  modern  hospitalities  of 
the  palace. 

Another  building  strikingly  quaint  and  suggestive 
of  ancient  manners  is  a  long,  low  structure,  gabled  and 
antique,  which,  some  six  or  seven  hundred  years  ago, 
was  the  residence  of  a  great  bishop  who  ruled  in  Chester. 
It  is  more  spacious  and  imposing  than  either  of  the 
others  just  mentioned.  Along  the  entire  front,  of  some 
eighty  feet,  runs  a  gallery  something  like  the  inclosed 
porch  of  a  Lancaster  County  hotel.  The  whole  front 
of  this  house,  from  the  roof  to  the  ground,  is  covered 
with  carved  and  graven  images  in  wood  of  curious  and 
often  grotesque  design.  Two  entirely  nude  figures, 
man  and  woman,  are  shown  you  by  the  guide,  and  one 


CHESTER.  13 

fa9ade  has  been  cancelled  and  shaven  plain,  the  imagery 
being  too  gross  for  modern  eyes. 

These  odd  old  buildings,  their  whole  fronts  covered 
with  curious  wooden  carvings,  and  many  of  them  de- 
voted now  to  the  commonest  and  humblest  uses,  give  a 
general  effect  to  Chester  which  is  stronger  and  more  im- 
pressive than  any  of  the  detached  "  shows"  which  here, 
as  in  any  locality,  are  always  forced  on  the  stranger. 
This  fantastic  tracery  of  steep  gables  and  overhanging 
eaves  and  brown  skeleton  rafters,  the  lean  ribs  of  cen- 
turies, and  quaint  relievos,  half-religious,  half-pagan,— 
this  and  the  beautiful  view  stretching  out  over  peaceful 
water  and  meadow  to  the  delicate  filmy  contour  of  the 
Welsh  mountains  are  the  pictures  of  the  place. 

The  great  sight  of  Chester,  of  course,  is  her  cathedral, 
the  central  point  which  gathers  up  her  history  from  the 
time  of  King  Alfred.  It  is  not  large  compared  with 
others  in  the  island,  but,  half  in  ruins,  is  beautiful  and 
picturesque  beyond  description.  This  cathedral,  like 
all  the  great  churches  of  England,  is  a  pantheon.  In 
St.  Paul's  and  Westminster  lie  the  dead  of  the  nation. 
In  Chester  and  other  country  churches  or  cathedrals 
sleep  the  local  great.  These  grand  graves,  where  those 
men  who  have  deserved  well  of  their  country  and  their 
fellows  are  gathered  in  noble  companionship  and  hon- 
ored for  ages,  are  a  powerful  stimulus  to  .great  thought 
and  heroic  action,  and  must  tend  strongly  to  elevate 
those  who  live  near  them  and  worship  in  them,  drawing 
them  daily  away  from  the  ignoble  struggle  for  mere 
gain  of  money,  and  lifting  them  up  to  better  things. 
For  in  all  this  country,  for  which  wealth  has  done  so 
much,  I  have  not  found  one  name  enshrined  there  in 
honor  merely  for  its  riches,  and  any  man  or  boy  may 
be  buried  in  the  greatest  church  of  his  county  or  the 
kingdom  if  he  does  some  service  to  his  fellows  worthy 
of  recognition  and  remembrance.  In  this  beautiful 
cathedral  of  Chester,  consecrated  by  art,  legend,  and  re- 
ligion, among  the  bishops  and  statesmen  and  generals 


14  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

of  centuries,  I  have  found  the  names  of  young  soldiers, 
without  rank,  fortune,  or  family,  who  died  only  a  few 
years  ago  in  the  Crimea. 

In  St.  Paul's  grand  pile,  where  lie  Wellington,  and 
Nelson,  and  Sir  John  Moore,  and  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson, 
and  John  Howard,  and  Bishop  Heber,  and  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds,  there  are  inscribed,  with  equal  honor,  the 
names  of  some  poor  unknown  ship-boys  who  in  a  great 
naval  action  went  down  nobly,  standing  to  their 
duty  as  grandly  and  as  faithfully  as  admiral  or  general. 
As  I  looked  at  this  tablet  some  young  sergeants,  proud 
of  their  early  chevrons,  and  of  a  regiment  on  its  way 
to  the  African  war,  were  poring  earnestly  over  the 
names,  and  I  knew  that  the  real  service  of  this  cathe- 
dral would  be  offered  some  day  in  silence  on  the  battle- 
fields of  Zululand. 

It  is  impossible,  of  course,  to  describe  in  words  such 
a  cathedral  as  this, — a  building  which  is  the  result  of 
the  consecrated  labor,  art,  and  devotion  of  centuries. 
And  it  is  but  one  of  many.  They  must  be  seen  to  be 
conceived,  and  when  seen  can  only  be  known  through 
the  eye  of  culture  and  history. 

Chester  cathedral  is  not  by  any  means  the  one  to 
select  as  the  prelude  to  a  course  of  systematic  study, 
but  it  does  well  enough  to  break  in  with.  One  must 
do  his  aesthetic  teething  somewhere,  and  Chester  answers 
very  well  for  that  purpose. 

Right  here  at  Chester,  on  the  threshold  of  England^ 
one  strikes  an  English  habit  which  is  offensive  to  Amer- 
ican taste,  and  which  will  jar  on  the  ear  during  one's 
entire  stay  in  the  country, — viz.,  the  corruption,  by  illiter- 
ate contraction,  of  the  language.  This  process  of  de- 
terioration is  going  steadily  on  in  all  classes.  Cheshire, 
the  county  name,  is  slovenly  and  ignorant  English  for 
Chestershire,  but  it  has  been  adopted  by  all  England, 
although  its  origin  must  have  been  from  the  thick-lipped 
hinds.  Cheshire  is  clownish,  and  means  nothing;  Ches- 


CHESTER.  15 

tershire  is  sonorous,  stately,  and  records  two  volumes  of 
English  national  history, — the  Latin  rule  of  the  camp 
and  the  Saxon  rule  of  the  shire. 

The  lower-class  Englishman  is  thoroughly  illiterate, 
and  often  succeeds  in  stamping  his  illiteracy  on  the  na- 
tion. There  cannot  be  a  neglected  class  in  any  com- 
munity without  the  whole  community  suffering  for  it. 
Just  as  the  Southern  people  in  our  country  acquired  a 
negro  twang  and  dialect,  the  black  nurses  teaching  it 
to  the  white  children,  so  to-day  the  English  language  in 
England  suffers  at  the  hands  of  its  large  uneducated 
and  neglected  class,  and  it  has  come  to  pass  that  Eng- 
lish gentlemen  cannot  keep  even  their  aristocratic 
names  intact,  but  accept  them  back  from  their  servants 
amtilated  and  vulgarized  in  sound.  Thus  Beaiichamp 
has  deteriorated  to  Beaeham,  Beauvoir  to  Beaver,  Stan- 
hope to  Stannup,  Cholmondeley  to  Chumly,  St.  John 
to  Sinjin,  Marjoribanks  to  Marsh  banks,  Worcester  to 
Wooster,  Leicester  to  Lester,  Greenwich  to  Greenitch, 
Chaworth  to  Chorth,  Woolwich  to  Woolich,  Ha  worth 
to  Horth,  Hawarden  to  Harden,  Warwick  to  Warick, 
Taliaferro  to  Toliver,  St.  Botolph's-town  to  Boston, 
Sandys  to  Sands,  Wemyss  to  Weems,  Dillwyn  to  Dil- 
lan,  Strachan  to  Strawn,  Mainwearing  to  Mannering, 
and  so  on  from  one  end  of  the  island  to  the  other. 

This  vulgar  and  servile  pronunciation,  especially  of 
the  lordly  old  Norman  names,  is  very  marked  and  very 
unpleasant  to  a  stranger.  But  it  is  retribution.  Eng- 
land has  not  been  true  to  her  trust  in  the  matter  of 
common  education.  With  universities  and  schools  far 
beyond  anything  we  can  pretend  to,  with  a  clergy 
educated  greatly  beyond  our  grade  and  enjoying  in  the 
days  of  priories  and  abbeys  the  monopoly  of  educa- 
tion, she  has  kept  her  talent  of  learning  selfishly  folded 
in  a  napkin  for  the  exclusive  uses  of  one  class.  Now 
the  wronged  classes  avenge  themselves. 

Indeed,  the  wrong  against  the  noble  language  of  Mil- 
ton and  Shakespeare  is  very  prevalent  throughout  all 


16  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

England,  high  and  low.  If  the  lower-class  Englishman 
drops  his  "h's,"  the  upper-class  Englishman  drops  his 
"  w;s ;"  and  I  do  not  know  that  the  offence  is  in  any 
way  mitigated  because  fashion  approves  the  one  elision 
and  disapproves  the  other.  "Extraordinary"  is  a  good 
shibboleth  with  which  to  test  the  Englishman.  Very 
rarely  does  he  successfully  master  the  "  d." 

It  sometimes  seems  as  if  the  special  function  of  the 
United  States  with  regard  to  our  common  English  lan- 
guage were  to  be  its  preservation  by  the  general  educa- 
tion of  the  whole  people.  England  has  shown  that  no 
special  centres  of  education,  however  excellent,  respected, 
or  sacred,  will  protect  the  purity  of  the  tongue  against 
masses  of  ignorance  and  servility. 

This  lazy  vitiation  of  the  English  by  the  dropping 
of  letters,  and  sometimes  of  whole  syllables,  is  in  con- 
stant progress  in  England  on  a  grand  scale,  enervating 
the  language  in  form  and  sound,  and  were  there  no 
communication  between  the  two  countries  would  soon, 
with  other  influences,  result  in  two  tongues  related  to 
each  other  like  French  and  Spanish  or  Spanish  and 
Italian.  As  it  is,  the  process  of  differentiation  has  al- 
ready set  in,  but  it  is  hourly  counteracted  by  the  inces- 
sant intercommunication  of  the  two  peoples. 

As  this  different  use  of  words  will  confront  the 
stranger  all  the  time  in  England,  I  give  here  some 
illustrations  to  show  on  how  large  a  scale  ihe  variation 
has  already  begun : 

English.  American. 

Shop.  Store. 

Shopkeeper.  Storekeeper,  merchant. 

Shares,  shareholder.  Stock,  stockholder. 

Chairman  (of  a  company).  President. 

Eailway.  Kailroad. 

High  level  (railway).  Elevated. 

Station.  Depot. 

Shunt.  Switch. 

Stoker.  Fireman. 

Guard.  Conductor. 

Driver.  Engineer. 


CHESTER. 


17 


English. 

Booking-t  ffice. 
Goods. 
Carriage. 
"  The  cars." 
Line. 
Chemist. 
Lift. 

Tram,  tramways. 
Outing. 
Post. 
To  book. 

To  post  (a  letter). 
To  book  (a  seat). 
To  "  take  in"  (a  newspaper) 
Quito,  in  the  sense  of 
Public-house. 
Spirits. 
Meat-shop. 
Tub. 

Cab,  cabman. 
Ian. 

Luggage,  luggage-van. 
'\\>  register  (luggage). 
Stick. 

The  hustings. 
The  Ministry. 
Member. 

"  Contesting  a  seat"  for  Parlia- 
ment. 


American. 

Ticket-office. 

Freight. 

Car. 

"The  train." 

Track. 

Druggist. 

Elevator. 

Street-cars. 

Excursion. 

Mail. 

To  charge. 

To  mail. 

To  buy  a  ticket. 

To  subscribe  for. 

Entirely. 

Tavern. 

Liquor. 

Butcher-shop. 

Bath. 

Hack,  hack-driver. 

Hotel. 

Haggage,  baggage-wagon,  -car. 

To  "check  (baggage). 

Cane. 

The  stump. 

The  Cabinet. 

Representative. 

"  "Running"  for  Congress. 


Who  can  translate  into  exact  American  "young 
son"  as  uttered  by  a  British  dame?  How  shall  one  ex- 
press, under  our  different  social  conditions,  the  contempt 
and  disgust  of  "  cad"  ?  What  equivalent  have  we  on 
this  side  of  the  Atlantic  for  those  great  structural  ver- 
tebra? of  an  Englishman's  speech,  "really,"  "ah," 
"  haw,"  "  now"  ? 

Were  it  not  for  the  large  and  continuous  intercom- 
munication of  books  and  magazines  and  newspapers, 
of  letters  and  telegrams  and  travel,  the  languages  would 
even  now  be  standing  widely  apart. 

The  "Rows,"  the  guide-book  feature  of  Chester,  were 
a  disappointment.  They  are  a  curiosity,  of  course,  but 

b  2* 


18  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

greatly  overrated.  The  best  description,  perhaps,  is  in 
one  of  Dickens's  later  novels,  but  the  great  novelist 
wrote  of  them  like  a  reporter  paid  by  the  column,  and 
from  his  trained  imagination  built  up  a  curiously  in- 
volved and  very  interesting  structure  on  a  rather  com- 
monplace foundation  of  fact.  The  Rows  run  only  for 
a  few  short  blocks,  and  are  simply  a  deep  porch  set  far 
in  each  house  and  open  from  house  to  house.  One 
can  walk  continuously  for  the  distance  of  a  block  along 
the  porches  just  as  on  the  street  below.  At  the  end  of 
each  block,  however,  he  must  descend  to  the  street, 
ascending  again  at  the  next  block.  In  time,  small  shops 
have  been  opened  in  the  second  story,  and  you  have 
thus  a  double  shopping-front  for  a  small  distance.  It 
is  only  this,  and  nothing  more. 

Chester's  greatness  and  interest  lie  in  her  historic 
riches, — her  wealth  of  culture,  legend,  religious  tradi- 
tion, and  power, — and  it  seems  a  pity  that  she  should  be 
labelled  and  ear-marked  for  travellers  by  what  is  at  best 
but  a  curiosity  and  but  an  item  in  her  vast  repertoire 
of  things  curious  and  quaint. 

Entering  this  pleasing  vestibule  of  England,  you 
meet  at  once  two  figures  unpleasant  to  the  American 
eye, — the  soldier  and  the  beggar.  Here  they  are  in 
these  quiet  sylvan  shades  and  echoless  cloisters,  and 
they  never  leave  you  wherever  you  go  in  Europe.  The 
poverty  and  beggary  of  Chester  are  very  repulsive  to 
one  unacquainted  with  the  squalor  and  wretchedness  of 
this  continent,  and  it  is  something  very  sad  to  see  them 
in  a  village  town  whose  chief  monument  and  distinction 
is  a  venerable  cathedral,  and  which  itself  is  almost  a 
cathedral  close.  The  British  scarlet  and  gold,  too, 
flashes  along  these  leafy  streets  and  under  ruined  walls 
and  still  moss-grown  arches, — wherever,  in  fact,  a  Brit- 
ish nursemaid  strays.  The  English  drum-beat  echoes 
every  day  around  the  entire  globe,  which  is  grand,  but 
it  is  also  heard  every  night  in  every  peaceful  county 
of  England,  which  is  not  so  grand. 


YORK.  19 


CHAPTER  II. 

YORK. 

AN  OLD  CATHEDRAL  CITY — THE  GATEWAY  TO  HISTORIC  ENG- 
LAND— A  TRAVELLER'S  PLIGHT— THE  ENGLISH  CATHEDRALS 
— STORY  OF  THEIR  BUILDING  AND  WHAT  THEY  COST — THE 
NEW  USES  OF  THE  OLD  TEMPLES  STRIPPED  OF  THEIR  PlC- 

TURES  AND    IDOLS — AN    ENGLISH    K.EST. 

YORK  is  the  historic  gateway  by  which  to  enter  Eng- 
land. The  stress  of  modern  travel  carries  one  to 
Liverpool,  and,  while  its  suburban  confine  of  Chester  is 
a  very  picturesque  and  pleasing  vignette  portal,  it  has 
no  historical  significance.  The  traveller  who  comes  to 
study  England  will  do  well  to  leave  there  after  a  day 
and  strike  directly  for  York.  This  is  in  conflict  with 
all  the  modern  routes  of  travel  •  but,  as  these  routes 
have  been  determined  for  the  use  and  advantage  of 
railway  companies  rather  than  the  pleasure  or  profit  of 
travellers,  they  arc  no  guide  to  an  intelligent  seeing  of 
the  country,  and  are  often  a  harm. 

York  was  a  stronghold  of  our  ancient  Briton  fathers 
and  a  capital  seat  of  rude  power  away  back  in  the  mists 
before  the  time  of  Christ.  It  was  the  capital  of  the 
Roman  empire  in  Britain,  and  the  old  Roman  military 
walls  around  the  city  are  still  standing  in  a  wonderful 
state  of  preservation.  You  could  fight  a  battle  from 
them  to-day  did  the  conditions  of  modern  warfare  allow 
it.  In  the  streets  and  buildings  and  remains  you  see 
the  record  successively  of  the  Roman  period  of  English 
history,  the  Saxon,  the  Norman,  and  modern  England 
from  the  Plantagenets  through  the  Commonwealth  down 
to  Victoria.  In  the  walls  and  arches  of  the  great 
minster  you  read  the  whole  history  of  English  archi- 


20  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

tecture, — Saxon,  Norman,  Late  Norman,  Early  English, 
Decorated,  Early  Perpendicular,  Perpendicular,  Late 
Perpendicular.  York  is  a  kindergarten  of  English 
history  for  grown  folks. 

In  its  name  York  is  another  illustration  of  the  in- 
herited and  hopeless  tendency  of  the  Englishman  to  a 
corruption,  by  contraction,  of  the  language.  "  York" 
is  the  stately  and  civilized  "  Eboracum"  of  the  Latins 
as  it  has  come  down  to  us  through  the  thick-lipped 
Saxons  and  half-articulating  Britons,  only  the  rude 
guttural  remains  of  a  once  polished  word. 

Coming  to  York  on  the  last  day  of  a  racing  week,  I 
had  an  experience  very  odd  to  an  American.  This 
town,  with  a  modern  population  of  fifty  thousand  and 
some  twenty  centuries  of  dignity,  has  hardly  the  hotel 
accommodation  of  one  of  our  Western  towns  of  ten 
thousand  people.  Every  inn  was  full,  and  the  land- 
lords did  not  seem  to  feel  under  the  least  obligation  to 
provide  for  any  one.  When  all  their  rooms  were  full 
they  seemed  to  think  their  duty  ended,  although  this 
thing  must  occur  again  and  again.  In  nearly  all  the 
old  towns  of  England  the  hotel  provision  is  simply 
ridiculous,  judged  by  our  necessities.  After  driving  to 
the  half-dozen  or  so  modest-sized  inns  of  the  place 
without  getting  a  lodgment,  I  was  about  taking  the  train 
again  to  find  a  roof  for  the  night,  when  some  citizen 
who  had  watched  the  quest  directed  me  to  a  private 
house  where  lodging,  he  thought,  might  be  had.  I 
found  there  very  good  apartments  and  fair  service 
and  meals,  but  at  a  cost  greater  than  the  Windsor  in 
New  York  or  the  St.  George  in  Philadelphia. 

Much  of  the  interest  of  the  town  attaches  to  its 
Norman  period,  as  you  read  it  in  castle  and  bar  and 
ruined  abbey,  although  in  this  epoch  of  its  splendor 
and  power  York  was  but  a  town  of  ten  thousand  in- 
habitants. The  Normans,  however,  cared  very  little 
for  monotonous  figures.  Although  great  sailors,  they 
had  only  moderate  capacity  as  traders ;  but  as  soldiers, 


YORK.  21 

priests,  artists,  poets  and  builders,  the  force  of  their 
time,  they  left  their  stamp  indelibly.  They  made  his- 
tory rather  than  textile  fabrics  or  patent  machinery. 

The  glory  of  York,  however, — as  it  is  one  of  the 
glories  of  England, — is  its  great  cathedral  or  minster; 
and  it  is  the  object  chiefest  worthy  of  study  in  the 
place.  It  is  indeed  a  very  good  specimen  with  which  to 
begin  the  study  of  the  English  cathedrals.  These  noble 
cathedrals  of  England,  spread  over  all  the  land,  are 
one  of  the  first  and  strongest  impressions  of  the  king- 
dom on  the  stranger.  They  are  so  grand,  so  beautiful, 
so  living,  like  breathing  hearts  of  stone,  that  seeing 
them  one  feels  at  once  as  if  he  had  never  seen  a  church 
before.  They  seem  not  of  this  world,  but  of  some 
other  world ;  higher  and  better  houses  not  made  with 
hands,  but  born  of  an  art  and  a  conception  beyond 
our  modern  powers. 

But  when  one  reflects  what  they  are  and  what  they 
mean,  they  start  a  singularly  involved  social  problem, 
and  the  cold  judgment  inclines  against  them.  They 
are  the  product  and  represent  that  dreary  and  profitless 
stretch  of  English  history  from  the  Norman  conquest 
to  the  Reformation, — five  wretched  centuries  of  want 
and  ignorance  and  human  suffering  and  stagnation. 
They  are  the  outcome,  and  with  a  few  castles  and 
splendid  abbeys  the  whole  outcome,  of  the  five  hundred 
years  in  which  England  was  a  province  of  the  modern 
Roman  empire,  the  people  and  the  kings  of  England 
ruled  over  by  cardinal-princes, — the  ecclesiastical  pro- 
consuls of  Rome.  During  this  period  all  the  other 
countries  of  Europe  were  similar  provinces,  and  these 
wonderful  cathedrals  went  up  in  them  all.  You  recog- 
nize at  once  the  essential  idea  of  them,  the  grand  con- 
ception, the  spirit  of  the  work,  as  you  meet  them  again 
in  France  and  Germany  and  North  Italy.  The  ca- 
thedral stands  out  everywhere  as  the  dominant  idea  of 
that  period  and  the  symbol  of  its  power.  This  idea  in 
the  different  development  of  our  day  is  lost,  and  you 


22  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

cannot  reproduce  these  old  cathedrals  now.  It  hab 
been  tried,  but  with  inevitable  failure.  No  study  or 
imitation  of  the  old  proportions  will  fashion  a  building 
like  unto  those  which  yet  speak  for  their  dead  age. 
You  may  get  something  which  is  like  the  form,  but  it 
is  not  the  living  form  ;  it  is  a  corpse.  The  soul  has 
forever  fled. 

Now,  what  is  painful  to  think  of  in  relation  to  these 
lovely  cathedrals  is  this  :  These  magnificent  buildings, 
that  seem  almost  to  glow  with  faith  and  beauty,  drank 
the  life-blood  of  England.  During  the  period  of  their 
building  England  was  almost  stationary.  There  was 
no  social  advance  and  no  social  hope.  There  were  no 
homes  in  England  as  we  know  them  now.  There  was 
no  freedom  as  we  know  it  now,  little  of  comfort,  and 
nothing  of  progress.  From  A.D.  1100  to  A.D.  1400  the 
population  of  England  advanced  but  ten  per  cent,  a 
century,  less  than  one-tenth  of  one  per  cent,  a  year. 
For  the  people  there  was  no  wealth,  no  education,  no 
trade  or  commerce.  There  was  deficient  food,  shelter, 
and  clothing,  and,  in  consequence,  continuous  disease 
and  epidemic.  There  was  chronic  war.  It  was  a  time 
of  plague,  pestilence,  and  famine,  of  battle  and  murder, 
and  of  sudden  death.  There  was  no  science,  there  was 
no  art  save  in  the  direction  of  ecclesiastical  architecture 
<ind  adornment. 

Yet  it  was  the  same  England,  with  the  same  people, 
soil,  climate,  and  resources,  as  to-day.  But  one-fourth 
of  the  adult  population  of  that  time  are  computed  to 
have  been  priests,  monks,  nuns,  and  their  hangers-on 
and  attendants,  non-productive  persons  and  an  eco- 
nomic burden  on  the  other  three-fourths,  whose  produc- 
tive powers  were  still  further  lessened  by  a  long  list  of 
saints'  da}Ts,  and  a  heavy  drain  for  military  purposes. 
This  is  the  England  of  these  beautiful  abbeys  and  ven- 
erable priories  and  stately  cathedrals.  All  over  Europe 
these  buildings  are  a  magnificent  demonstration  of  or- 
ganized ecclesiastical  power  and  a  wonderful  flowering 


YORK.  23 

of  aesthetic  force,  but  it  has  been  all  at  the  cost  ana  sac- 
rifice of  the  common  people,  whose  "  bodies  are  the 
temples  of  the  living  God."  For  them  these  silent 
gray  cathedrals  meant  intellectual  and  civil  starvation, 
social  degradation,  physical  ill  health,  and  the  shorten- 
ing of  life. 

For  one  who  wants  to  drink  in  the  beauty  of  the 
cathedrals  of  Europe  it  is  better  to  begin  with  those  of 
England, — Lincoln,  and  Ely,  and  Peterborough,  and 
Durham,  and  Lichfield,  and  Canterbury,  and  Salisbury, 
and  Exeter,  and  Winchester,  and  Wells,  all  of  which 
are  worth  a  visit,  and  many  others.  It  is  better  to 
begin  with  these  English  cathedrals  and  enjoy  them 
while  one  may;  for,  with  all  their  impressive  splendor 
to  our  unaccustomed  Puritan  eyes,  they  come  to  look 
empty  and  bare  and  cold  after  one  has  once  felt  the 
sensuous  glories  of  the  churches  of  Southern  Europe. 
The  beauty  of  these  Northern  churches  is  too  severely 
intellectual  in  contrast  with  the  warmth  and  rich  color 
of  the  South.  Coming  back  from  there,  one  feels  the 
nakedness  of  the  stern  gray  cathedrals  of  England 
and  longs  for  the  Madonnas  and  bright  coloring  of  Italy, 
the  ascending  incense,  the  burning  lamps  and  warm  pic- 
tures, the  family  altars,  the  noble  armies  of  saints,  the 
marble  flight  of  pure;  white  angels, — thousands  and  thou- 
sands of  them, — and  the  splendor  of  the  trembling  altar 
with  its  sacred  lights  flaming  over  silver  and  precious 
stones. 

To  tell  the  truth,  although  our  Church-of-England 
friends  never  quite  like  to  hear  it,  these  great  cathedrals 
of  theirs  were  built  by  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. 
They  belong,  with  all  their  splendors,  to  it,  with  all  its 
defects.  Their  present  use  is  unsympathetic  and  an  an- 
achronism. Robbed  of  their  saints  and  swinging  cen- 
sers, their  beautiful  idols  and  graven  images  and  poly- 
theistic chapefe,  they  are  a  cold  void.  For  the  present 
Church-of-England  service  they  have  little  more  special 
appropriateness  than  has  a  Greek  temple.  And  so 


24  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

it  has  come  to  pass  that  in  some  of  them  the  choir  is 
inclosed  from  floor  to  roof  on  all  sides,  and  fashioned 
into  a  new  Protestant  church  within  the  old  cathe- 
dral, conformed  to  the  exigencies  of  the  modern 
worship. 

For  the  American  stranger,  to  whom  the  outside  of 
the  Old  World  is  all  a  poem,  York  is  a  delightful  old 
town  just  to  wander  through  alone  and  at  will.  It  is 
full  of  quaint  and  ancient  little  streets,  overhanging 
houses,  antiquated  stone  seats  and  remains,  odd  nooks 
and  corners  that  have  come  down  from  the  Middle  Ages. 
In  all  its  streets  you  read  the  legend  of  Roman  and 
Saxon  and  Dane  and  Norman  and  Puritan.  On  its 
walls  you  see  the  Plantagenet  and  Tudor  emblems.  At 
one  sweep  in  a  few  hours  in  York  you  may  find  Roman 
altars  and  coffins  and  forgotten  household  gods,  Saxon 
monuments,  Norman  fortifications,  the  poor  dwellings 
of  the  people  in  medieval  times,  Elizabethan  manors, 
and  the  unimpressive  because  familiar  building  of  our 
own  day. 

York  was  once  the  northern  metropolis  of  England, 
a  centre  of  fashion  and  political  life,  and  dividing  eccle- 
siastical power  with  Canterbury  and  London  at  a  time 
when  ecclesiasticism  was  the  force  of  the  realm.  Now 
the  railways  have  drawn  all  that  to  London,  and  York  is 
a  quiet,  easy-going  old  cathedral  city,  eminently  respect- 
able, aristocratic,  and  rather  sleepy.  As  a  social  study  I 
have  no  doubt  it  is  interesting  and  worth  investigation, 
but  it  was  not  my  fortune  to  know  it  save  from  the  out- 
side. A  cathedral  city  is  itself  an  order  of  life  and 
society  unknown  to  us,  and  which  it  would  take  a  novel 
to  reveal. 

There  are  three  clubs  in  York,  and  they  sho\v  how 
the  lines  are  drawn.  One,  and  the  leading,  the  York- 
shire, is  for  "county  gentlemen";  the  York  is  for 
"  city  professional  gentlemen" ;  while  the  third  and  last, 
the  City,  is  for  "  tradesmen." 

York,  with  a  population  of  fifty  thousand,  and  tb 


SHOTTERF.  25 

capital  of  the  largest  county  in  England, — Yorkshire,— 
covering  a  population  of  about  two  and  a  half  millions 
of  souls,  has  just  three  weekly  newspapers. 

It  is  an  English  town  from  top  to  bottom,  old- 
fashioned,  comfortable,  dignified,  and  satisfied  with  it- 
self. There  is  nothing  in  our  land  with  which  to  con- 
trast it  or  run  a  parallel.  There  is  probably  no  way  in 
which  a  stranger  would  get  a  better  inside  conception 
of  English  provincial  life  of  a  high  order  than  by  living 
for  a  few  weeks  in  York ;  and  if  one  were  fatigued  or 
exhausted  by  the  wear  and  tear  of  the  ocean,  it  would 
be  an  excellent  and  profitable  resting-place. 

YORK,  ENGLAND 


CHAPTER   III. 


SHOTTERY. 

ANNE  HATHEWAY'S  COTTAGE  AS  IT  STANDS  TO-DAY — A  FARM 
VILLAGE — SHAKESPEARE'S  LOVE  IN  THE  THATCHKU  COT- 
TAGE — THE  LOCAL  AFFECTION  FOR  THE  STORY. 


I  HAVE  walked  to-day  from  here  to  the  neighboring 
village  of  Shottery  to  see  the  cottage  where  Anne  Hathe- 
way  lived  and  where  Shakespeare  won  her.  It  Tvas  a 
charming  bit  of  representative  English  scenery,  that 
landscape  and  view  so  unlike  our  own,  and  yet  so 
familiar  through  literature  and  tradition  that  it  always 
seems  to  me  as  if  I  had  seen  it  before  in  dreams  or  some 
previous  condition  of  existence.  I  followed  a  footpath 
across  the  fields,  with  old-fashioned  stiles  at  every  fence 
and  hawthorn  hedges  along  the  lanes, — the  very  path 
trod  by  Shakespeare  in  his  quest  of  Anne.  Tradition 
does  not  say  how  often  he  had  to  walk  it. 

The  cottage,  a  quaint,  straw-thatched  building    <w- 


26  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

ered  with  ivy  and  rose-bushes,  is  in  a  good  state  of 
preservation.  The  old  house,  which  was,  for  its  time, 
commodious  and  of  some  pretensions,  is  now  occupied 
by  three  families, — farm  laborers.  The  central  divis- 
ion, which  is  formed  of  the  hall  and  main  fireplace,  *and 
the  sitting-room  of  the  old  building  as  it  stood  .in 
Shakespeare's  time,  is  now  known  as  the  Hatheway 
cottage,  and  is  kepi  much  as  it  stood  then,  with  some 
of  the  old  furniture  and  heirlooms  of  the  family.  An 
elderly  woman,  with  the  pleasant  manners  of  the  hum- 
ble classes  here,  received  me,  and  showed  a  real  and  in- 
telligent interest  in  explaining  the  legend  and  relics  of 
the  place.  In  answer  to  a  question,  she  told  me  she 
was  herself  a  Hatheway,  and  that  her  family  had  lived 
on  the  spot  ever  since  the  time  of  Shakespeare,  as  well 
as  for  generations  before. 

Although  the  exterior  of  the  house  is  of  humble  ap- 
pearance, the  Hatheway  family  must  have  been  of  the 
better  sort  in  their  days.  The  room  where  Shakespeare 
made  love — or  where  Anne  made  love  to  him,  as  a 
somewhat  cynical  and  mature  damsel  of  the  place,  who 
seemed  to  look  on  my  walk  to  Shottery  parish  as  a 
kind  of  mild  lunacy,  informed  me — is  a  large  room, 
some  fifteen  feet  square,  handsomely  panelled  in  oak. 
It  is  flagged  with  broad  stones,  worn  smooth  by  the 
steps  of  generations,  looking  rude  to  us,  but  which  was 
the  comfortable  custom  of  the  time.  The  great  feature 
of  the  room  is  the  wide,  old-fashioned  chimney-place, 
in  which  you  can  sit,  and  sitting  look  up  through  to 
the  sky.  In  the  left  wing  of  this  capacious  fireplace, 
as  you  face  it,  there  is  cut  or  built  in  the  wall  the 
bacon-closet,  still  serving  that  homely  use  for  the 
Hatheways  of  1880.  On  the  right  side  stands  the 
"  court in'-settle,"  as  my  old  friend  phrased  it,  a  very 
rude  wooden  bench,  some  five  feet  long,  with  back  and 
low  arms.  This  seat  my  guide  was  sure  was  the  real 
and  veritable  place  which  did  the  work,  and  carried  the 
Hatheway  family  into  legend  and  history.  On  it  sat 


SHOTTERY.  27 

at  the  time  of  my  visit  a  young  girl  of  sixteen,  sewing 
some  homely  work, — a  Hatheway  without  a  Shakespeare. 

Up  a  narrow  and  humble  wooden  stairway  you  reach 
the  half-story  rooms,  which  are  now  and  were  in  the 
sixteenth  century  the  sleeping-apartments  of  the  family. 
The  bedstead,  the  central  feature,  is  further  evidence  of 
the  substantial  standing  of  the  family.  It  is  hand- 
somely carved  with  scroll-work  and  human  figures, 
some  of  them  resembling  the  grotesque  carving  seen  in 
ancient  cathedrals.  This  work  appears,  by  its  style  and 
class,  to  date  about  four  hundred  years  ago.  The  bed  has 
been  in  the  Hatheway  family  ever  since  their  name  be- 
came a  matter  of  interest,  and  is  believed  by  them  to  have 
been  used  for  generations  before.  It  is  not  in  use  now> 
and  is  furnished  with  very  heavy  and  soft  linen,  woven 
in  the  family,  and  hemmed  with  wonderful  elaboration. 
This,  too,  an  heirloom  from  more  prosperous  times.  In 
this  bedroom  is  a  spinning-wheel  seat,  alleged  to  huvc 
been  immortalized  by  Shakespeare,  but  the  good  dumc 
would  not  give  the  passage  by  which  his  kindly  re- 
membrance had  carried  the  homely  object  into  literature. 

This  room,  the  old  state  bedroom  of  the  family, 
like  its  adjoining  mate,  the  present  sleeping-apartment 
of  the  house,  is  so  low  that  you  touch  the  ceiling  every- 
where except  in  the  centre,  and  the  joists  and  rafters 
are  joined  together  not  by  nails  but  by  wooden  pegs. 

The  Hatheways  of  Shakespeare's  time  were  "  yeo- 
men," a  class  of  British  society  that  has  pretty  much 
disappeared.  The  people  who  live  in  their  cottage  to- 
day are  farm-laborers,  a  class  so  poor  and  ignorant  and 
hopeless  of  any  future  that  we  happily  have  no  equiv- 
alent to  it  in  the  United  States.  This  fact  accounts  for 
much  of  the  contrast  between  the  substance  and  com- 
fort indicated  by  these  relics  and  traditions  of  the  past 
and  the  meagreness  and  poverty  of  the  family  to-day. 
It  makes  this  humble  cottage,  also,  an  instructive  illus- 
tration of  a  very  unsatisfactory  change  that  has  been 
going  on  in  the  lower  order  of  English  society. 


28  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

Visitors,  the  Hatheway  dowager  informed  me,  came 
often,  but  not  so  many  in  these  hard  times  as  in  years 
before.  The  Americans,  she  said,  were  "  the  best;"  and 
to  my  inquiry  as  to  what  was  best,  she  said  they  took 
most  interest  and  seemed  most  pleased.  I  was  pretty 
sure  my  hostess  took  me  for  an  American  prince,  and 
so,  noblesse  oblige,  gave  her  a  shilling,  where  I  think  a 
sixpence  was  the  usual  gratuity.  This  modest  British 
coin  brought  me  a  shower  of  blessings  and  kind  wishes, 
and,  what  was  more  practical,  some,  snowdrops  and 
"  rosemary  for  remembrance"  from  the  garden.  Indeed, 
the  real  gratitude  which  a  shilling  given  to  a  decent 
man  or  woman  in  this  land  always  evokes  is  sad  evi- 
dence of  the  narrow  margin  of  existence  here.  Life  is 
a  struggle,  and  the  poor  go  into  it  burdened  and  handi- 
capped almost  beyond  hope. 

In  the  modest  garden  of  the  cottage,  planted  with 
box,  lavender,  marigold,  rosemary,  pansy,  thyme,  and 
other  familiar  English  flowers  and  shrubs,  stands  the 
well  of  pure  cold  water,  in  the  same  place  and  serving  the 
same  homely  uses  as  of  old.  It  is  doubtful,  however,  if 
Shakespeare  ever  drank  of  it.  The  Englishman  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  like  the  Englishman  of  the  nine- 
teenth, I  suppose,  confined  himself  to  ale. 

In  my  walk  across-fields  from  Stratford-on-Avon  to 
Shottery,  the  footpath  of  course  often  diverged,  and  I 
was  forced  to  inquire  of  those  I  met  the  way.  I  was 
much  struck  with  the  familiar  knowledge  of  all  with 
the  story  of  Shakespeare's  love,  and  their  simple  pride 
in  it.  In  other  localities  where  there  were  famous 
churches,  in  which  good  knights  and  old  earls  famous  in 
history  lay  buried,  I  have  often  inquired  of  respectable- 
looking  people  and  found  them  ignorant  of  or  only  half 
acquainted  with  the  great  historic  features  of  these 
places.  In  Warwick,  for  instance,  I  found  several 
worthy  people  who  seemed  to  know  nothing  of  the 
great  Earl  of  Leicester,  and  not  to  care  much  whether 
his  body  was  in  their  church  or  not.  All  around  Shot 


SHOTTERY.  29 

tery,  however,  the  name  of  Anne  Hatheway  was  a 
household  word  and  the  humble  thatched  cottage  a 
shrine.  Some  rude  farm-laborers,  who  spoke  so  thickly 
I  could  hardly  understand  them,  and  used  language  so 
provincial  as  not  to  seem  English  to  American  ears, 
and  some  bright  little  boys  hardly  twelve  years  old, 
alike  gave  intelligent  answers,  showed  a  friendly  sym- 
pathy in  my  quest,  and  seemed  to  think  my  pilgrimage 
the  right  and  proper  and  natural  thing  to  do. 

This  is  "  Shakespeare  land."  The  town  lives  and 
moves  and  has  its  being  in  his  memory  and  tradition. 
His  body  lies  buried  here  in  a  beautiful  and  stately 
edifice, — a  noble  shrine  to  which  the  culture  and  genius 
of  the  world  come  to  worship;  the  house  in  which  he 
was  horn  has  been  carefully  and  faithfully  restored, 
and  is  held  in  honorable  trust  for  the  use  and  devotion 
of  posterity;  the  dwelling  in  which  he  died  is  set  apart 
from  common  uses,  and  is  to  be  the  site  of  a  grand 
memorial  monument ;  but  the  hearts  of  this  people  go 
out  in  simple  love  and  affection  to  the  little  cottage 
where  he  loved,  even  though  historic  gossip  suggests 
and  calm  reflection  convinces  one  that  the  passionate 
fascination  of  a  boy  of  eighteen  for  an  innocent  crea- 
ture of  twenty-six  was  not  a  purely  idyllic  romance. 

I  am  staying  here  at  the  Red  Horse  Inn,  a  house 
which  has  the  enviable  distinction  of  having  its  adver- 
tisement drawn  by  Washington  Irving.  He  introduced 
it  into  American  literature  in  his  first  letters  from  Eng- 
land, and  it  has  ever  since  enjoyed  a  rich  castom  of 
American  travel,  and  is  worthy  of  it.  Irving,  long 
years  ago,  wrote  with  grateful  feeling  of  its  good  cheer, 
its  solid  comforts,  its  homelike  domesticity,  its  honest 
wines,  and  its  pretty  waiting-maids,  and  the  house  keeps 
up  well  its  reputation  in  all  these  essential  points.  Of 
the  inns  of  England  suffice  it  to  say  that,  while  some- 
what expensive  as  compared  with  our  hotels,  they  are 
a  delightful  experience  in  life  which  I  fear  we  shall 

3* 


30  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

never  have  in  our  country.  Neither  our  landlords  are 
solid  and  unassuming  enough  to  give  them  nor  our 
people  sensible  enough  to  demand  and  have  them.  I 
have  tried  three  now, — the  Craven  Arms,  at  Coventry, 
'the  Warwick  Arms,  at  Warwick,  and  the  classic  Red 
Horse  here, — and  understand  the  reason  of  their  affec- 
tionate remembrance  in  English  literature. 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

READING   IN   BERKSHIRE. 

HEADING  OF  ENGLAND  AND  READING  OF  PENNSYLVANIA — 
COMPARATIVE  PICTURE  OF  Two  COUNTY  TOWNS — BLOOD  is 
STRONGER  THAN  WATER. 

READING  of  England,  like  the  familiar  Reading  of 
our  Pennsylvania,  is  the  capital  town  of  the  county  of 
Berks,  here  often  called  Berkshire, — the  shire  or  shriev- 
alty of  Berks.  The  two  towns  are  almost  about  the 
same  size, — 42,000  to  45,000  inhabitants.  Reading  of 
England  figures  in  the  directories  at  27,000,  but  the 
town  of  Early,  which  is  built  into  it  so  that  the  stranger 
cannot  tell  in  which  municipal  corporation  he  may  be, 
is  substantially  and  popularly  a  part  of  Reading,  and 
brings  its  population  up  to  the  figures  of  its  New-World 
namesake. 

England's  Berks  County  has  a  population  of  196,475, 
and  an  acreage  of  450,132  acres.  The  Pennsylvania 
Berks  has  a  population  of  something  over  100,000,  and 
an  acreage  something  over  600,000  acres.  They  are 
near  enough  to  make  a  parallel  have  some  interest. 

Politically,  all  comparison  ceases.  Berks  of  Penn- 
sylvania, with  its  Reading  in  it,  sends  one  member  to 
the  House  of  Representatives  of  the  United  States,  and 


READING   IN  BERKSHIRE.  31 

sends  him  by  male  or  manhood  suffrage,  every  male 
citizen  of  age  and  not  convicted  of  an  infamous  offence 
having  an  equal  voice  in  the  selection  of  the  repre- 
sentative. The  Berkshire  of  England,  with  only  7741 
legal  votes,  sends  to  the  House  of  the  Commons  of  the 
United  Kingdom  three  members,  two  of  whom  are 
Conservatives  and  one  Liberal ;  while  Readingtown  in 
its  own  right,  on  a  registry  of  4721  votes,  sends  two 
more  members,  both  of  whom  are  in  this  Parliament 
Liberals.  Then  Abingdon,  with  890  votes,  Walling- 
ford,  with  1204  votes,  and  Windsor,  with  2054  votes, 
all  boroughs  in  the  same  county,  send  one  member  each, 
two  of  whom  are  Conservatives  and  one  Liberal.  Eight 
members,  therefore,  are  sent  from  the  county  of  Berks, 
and,  as  it  may  often  happen  under  the  peculiar  British 
system  of  voting  and  representation,  they  are  exactly 
divided  as  to  party.  Berks  County,  therefore,  pairs 
itself  in  the  House  of  Commons.  I  write  of  the 
House  which  expired  in  1880. 

The  county  is  represented  in  the  upper  house  by  all 
/ts  peers,  be  they  one  or  twenty.  It  is  to  be  said,  how- 
ever, for  the  honor  of  the  peers,  that  its  members  when 
sitting  as  legislators  rise  above  sectional  or  local  feelings 
and  sit  for  the  whole  country, — i.e.,  when  that  does  not 
conflict  with  their  sitting  for  their  own  class.  I  am 
[rlad  of  the  opportunity  to  make  this  political  contrast, 
for  it  is  only  by  such  pictures  that  one  can  set  forth  the 
wide  differences  of  detail  in  the  practical  politics  of  the 
two  countries. 

The  Reading  I  write  from  is  a  very  ancient  site.  It 
emerges  in  a  shadowy  way  out  of  the  night  of  history, 
and  first  appears  in  recorded  tradition  as  Redinges, 
which  has  very  naturally  softened  into  Reading.  The 
Danes  and  Saxons  fought  around  here  one  thousand 
years  ago.  King  Alfred  the  Great  once  or  more  visited 
the  spot.  Parliaments  of  England  sat  here  when  the 
Parliament  was  a  peripatetic  and  experimental  institu- 
tion, wandering  around  as  our  own  Continental  Congress 


32  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

once  did  through  York  and  Lancaster  and  Philadelphia, 
Archbishop  Laud  and  John  Bunyan  were  familiar  with 
its  streets.  An  old  King  Henry,  about  1100,  founded 
for  it  a  magnificent  abbey  to  house  and  accommodate 
two  hundred  Benedictine  monks, — the  same  fortunate 
fellows  who  once  enjoyed  the  historic  cloisters  of  West- 
minster Abbey  and  were  a  great  order  in  England. 
The  stately  ruins  of  this  grand  old  abbey,  artistically 
clad  in  fresh  and  neatly-kept  ivy,  jealously  guarded 
from  decay  on  the  one  hand  or  too  perfect  restoration 
on  the  other,  are  now  the  pride  and  glory  of  the  Reading 
of  to-day.  It  is,  in  truth,  a  very  striking  and  vener- 
able pile.  The  great  old  walls,  with  gates  and  arch- 
ways and  massive  works  still  standing  in  the  rough 
outline  of  hall  and  chapel  and  cloister,  are  quite  re- 
markable in  their  composition,  the  masonry  resembling 
that  natural  conglomerate  formation  of  rock  popularly 
known  as  pudding-stone.  The  huge  walls  in  front  have 
been  built  entirely  of  pebbles  or  bowlders  of  a  hard, 
smoky  crystal  or  quartz,  imbedded  in  some  kind  of 
mortar,  which  formed  the  whole  into  one  solid  mass. 

These  are  the  things  which  uld  Reading  has  in  advan- 
tage over  our  new  Reading.  And  these  legacies  of  the 
past  are  not  only  a  wealth  of  tradition  and  legend  and 
inspiring  associations,  but  a  substantial  material  bequest 
of  brick  and  mortar.  Her  churches,  her  public  build- 
ings, her  roads, — in  part  at  least, — come  down  to  her  as 
the  gift  of  previous  generations.  This  is  the  advantage 
which  every  English  town  has  over  us,  and  it  is  a  great 
one. 

These  things  apart,  there  is  a  strong  similarity  be- 
tween the  two  towns, — the  Readings  of  England  and 
Pennsylvania.  In  both  the  houses  are  solid,  comfort- 
able, respectable, — the  dwellings  of  a  substantial  mid- 
dle class  of  people.  In  both  the  streets  are  spacious 
and  fairly  well  kept.  In  both  brick  is  the  predomi- 
nating material  of  structure,  and  in  both  there  is  a  dis- 
tinctly visible  new  and  old  order  of  building.  The 


READING   IN  BERKSHIRE.  33 

pavements  of  the  Pennsylvania  Reading  are  roomier 
than  those  here,  and  the  accommodations  for  travellers 
on  a  larger  scale.  Although  three  railways  run  into 
or  through  the  place,  there  does  not  seem  to  be  much 
travel,  and  consequently  little  provision  for  it.  The 
business  of  Reading  is  largely  as  a  distributing  centre 
for  Berks  County,  which  comes  in  and  goes  out  the 
same  day,  while  the  nobility  and  upper  classes  rarely 
have  occasion  to  use  a  country  hotel,  visiting  at  one  an- 
other's houses.  These  facts,  of  course,  limit  the  neces- 
sity of  providing  for  travel.  I  am  staying  at  the  tradi- 
tional county-house,  a  good  old  English  inn,  which, 
although  comfortable  and  excellent  in  its  way,  is  quite 
primitive  and  thoroughly  provincial.  Our  Reading  is 
quite  "  smarter." 

It  is  to  be  said  further  for  this  Reading  that  its  best 
does  not  show  on  the  outside.  The  nobility  and  landed 
gentry,  of  course,  eschew  a  town  and  spend  their  large 
means  in  building  country  establishments,  which,  being 
seated  in  the  heart  of  vast  estates,  are  out  of  sight  even 
from  the  high-roads.  The  presence  of  this  class  in  the 
town  is  seen  only  in  an  occasional  drag  on  the  streets, 
or  the  "  boxes"  and  ponies  and  coroneted  equipages 
and  heavily-built  hunters  which  indicate  the  neigh- 
borhood of  gentlemen's  stables.  Were  all  the  houses 
of  the  wealthier  people  of  our  Reading  to  be  with- 
drawn from  its  town  limits,  it  would  lower  the  level  of 
the  appearance  of  the  place  very  greatly. 

The  environs  of  the  town  here  are  for  this  season 
very  beautiful  and  attractive.  As  you  pass  along  the 
road  you  catch  continuous  glimpses  of  homes  of  ease 
and  elegance  and  refinement  hidden  in  tlfe  trees  or 
nestling  quietly  and  warmly  in  the  midst  of  broad  and 
abounding  acres,  golden  now  with  wheat,  and  bordered 
by  thorn-hedges  red  and  fragrant  with  roses. 

This  Reading  of  England,  like  ours,  is  also  some- 
what famous  for  its  breweries, — its  fountains  of  beer. 
It  has,  too,  noted  iron-works,  a  fairly  gigantic  biscuit- 


34  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

factory  known  all  over  the  kingdom,  and  other  manu- 
factories, and  has  become  quite  a  centre  of  the  seed 
trade  in  England.  In  fact,  this  trade  is  the  most  conspic- 
uous in  this  place,  the  seed  depdt  of  the  main  house  in 
the  business  being  an  enormous  aifair  entirely  dispro- 
portionate in  size  to  anything  else  in  the  town.  Being 
on  the  junction  of  the  Thames  with  another  small 
stream,  this  Reading  has  also  some  shipping  and  fishing 
interests,  which  our  town  has  not,  and  the  Oxford  stu- 
dents come  down  to  it  often  in  racing-  and  boating-par- 
ties. The  boating  is,  indeed,  quite  a  feature  of  the 
place,  giving  a  distinct  local  color  to  the  town. 

Anglican  Reading,  finally,  has  a  park  with  which,  I 
suppose,  our  younger  town  cannot  compete.  It  is  not 
large,  but  speaks  well  for  the  cultivation  and  aesthetic 
advancement  of  the  people.  Its  laying  out  evinces  a 
thorough  acquaintance  with  the  best  principles  of  land- 
scape-gardening, and  fully  doubles  its  apparent  size 
and  all  its  uses.  Its  treasures  of  ornament  are  quite 
effective, — wonderful  old  trees  always  the  centres  of 
little  systems  of  walks,  a  grim,  black  cannon,  "  cap- 
tured at  Sevastapol,"  fountains  and  basin  grass-plots 
relieved  with  rare  flowers  and  exotic  foliage,  and,  last 
and  best,  the  crowning  feature  to  which  all  avenues 
finally  lead  you,  that  stately  old  abbey,  with  its  royal 
ivy  and  arched  vistas,  and  scattered  fragments  and 
capitals,  and  the  stone  sarcophagus,  and  all  the  "  prop- 
erties," in  fine,  which  any  well-regulated,  picturesque 
old  English  abbey  should  have. 

Like  our  own  Reading,  this  one,  too,  rests  in  a  mag- 
nificent background  of  generous  farms  and  agricultural 
wealth.  The  good  cheer  of  the  country  is  everywhere 
visible, — in  the  fruiting-fields,  in  the  warm,  rubicund 
faces  of  the  burghers,  in  the  heavy,  well-fed  horses, 
and  in  the  general  well-to-do  and  contented  look  of 
everything  and  everybody.  The  farms  of  Berkshire 
are  reputed  through  England,  and  the  famous  Berk- 
shire pigs  are  known  to  breeders  the  world  over.  In 


READING  IN  BERKSHIRE.  35 

the  old  country,  as  in  the  new,  the  county  of  Berks 
is  the  solid  foundation  of  Reading  city. 

This  Reading  has  just  three  weekly  newspapers  and 
none  daily.  Compare  this  with  the  vigor  and  energy 
and  journalistic  excellence  of  the  large  press  of  Amer- 
ican Reading,  daily,  weekly,  and  monthly,  and  you 
know  which  country  you  are  in. 

To  trace  this  parallel  between  these  two  towns  of 
our  two  countries,  although  starting  in  the  accidental 
point  of  similarity  of  name,  has  been  very  interesting 
to  me,  and  I  trust  will  be  equally  so  to  some  of  my 
readers.  The  two  people  are  very  much  alike;  their 
dwellings  are  similar;  their  ways  and  habits. of  living 
about  the  same,  even,  notwithstanding  the  strong  in- 
fusion of  Germanic  blood  into  the  human  stream  of 
our  Reading.  But  what  is  that  again  but  the  repeti- 
tion in  modern  times,  and  on  a  small  scale,  of  the  an- 
cient race  history  of  England  ?  The  two  towns  repre- 
sent also  the  substantial  middle-class  population  of 
both  counties,  and  it  is  interesting  and  instructive  to 
observe  that  like  conditions  of  life,  or  nearly  like,  pro- 
duce on  both  sides  of  the  wator  about  the  same  results, 
notwithstanding  the  great  differences  of  politics,  gov- 
ernment, and  social  structure  which  exist  between  us. 
It  is  evidence  of  our  common  blood  and  race, — a  blood 
that  goes  back  of  modern  history  and  takes  in  German 
as  well  as  English  stock. 

READING,  ENGLAND. 


36  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 


CHAPTER  V. 

LANCASTEK. 

Two  TOWNS  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD  AND  THE  NEW — TRACING 
THE  LINEAMENTS  OF  THE  PENNSYLVANIA  TOWN  IN  THE 
BLOOD  AND  SOIL  OF  ENGLAND — ENGLISH  ELECTORAL  SYSTEM 
— VOTERS  WITH  THREE  OR  MORE  VOTES — THE  CELTIC  TINGE 
— A  MISSING  LINK— THE  OLD  TIME  COLONIAL  LANCAS- 
TER OF  PENNSYLVANIA  FRESH  IN  ENGLAND  YET. 

PENNSYLVANIA,  in  her  State  nomenclature,  bears 
perpetual  testimony  to  the  affectionate  remembrance  in 
which  the  early  English  settlers  ever  held  their  old 
country,  keeping  green  in  the  names  of  the  new  land 
the  memory  of  the  old  homes  they  should  see  no  more 
in  this  world.  The  extent  and  detail  in  which  this  has 
been  done  is  quite  remarkable,  although  it  often  escapes 
notice  until  it  is  forced  on  one's  attention  by  finding 
in  a  strange  land  place  after  place  with  the  old  familiar 
names.  This  systematic  reproduction  sometimes  almost 
makes  the  new  land  seem  like  a  shadow  of  the  old. 

There  are  here  a  Carlisle  town,  "  on  which  the  sun 
shines  fair,"  which  is  the  county-seat  of  Cumberland ; 
a  Reading,  the  county-seat  of  Berkshire;  a  Lancaster, 
the  county-town  of  Lancashire ;  a  York,  the  county- 
town  of  Yorkshire ;  a  Chester,  the  cathedral  city  of 
Cheshire ;  a  Huntingdon,  in  Huntingdon  County  ;  and 
a  Bedford,  in  Bedford  County.  There  are  a  Bucks 
County,  a  Montgomery  County,  a  Westmoreland  County, 
a  Northampton  County,  a  Somerset  County,  a  North- 
umberland County;  and  in  detached  towns  and  villages, 
streams,  townships,  and  so  on,  one  might  run  the  list 
out  indefinitely. 

In  this  Lancaster  from  which  I  write  one  can 
trace  the  family  relationship  even  to  minuter  detail. 


LANCASTER.  37 

There  are  here  from  old  a  King  Street  and  a  Queen 
Street  and  a  Little  Duke  Street,  and  St.  Mary's,  James', 
High,  Market,  Water,  Ann,  Church,  and  Middle 
Streets.  Our  Prince  Street  is  here  Prince  Regent 
Street.  There  are  a  St.  Peter's  Roman  Catholic  Church 
and  a  Phoenix  Foundry,  which  may,  for  aught  I  know, 
be  the  parent  of  our  Phcenixville  Iron-Works. 

England's  Lancaster,  like  Pennsylvania's,  is  a  town 
of  something  over  twenty  thousand  people  and  the 
centre  of  a  Lancaster  County,  but  between  the  two 
counties  there  is  no  parallel.  England's  Lancashire  has 
nearly  three  millions  of  population.  It  is  relatively 
one  of  the  largest  counties  of  England,  having  an  acre- 
age of  one  million  two  hundred  and  eight  thousand 
acres.  During  this  century  it  has  become  the  centre 
of  the  cotton  trade,  and  cities  like  Manchester  and 
Liverpool,  with  their  hundreds  of  thousands  of  inhab- 
itants, have  sprung  up  within  its  borders,  but  little 
Lancaster  town,  with  its  old  church  and  castle  and  the 
prestige  of  its  Roman  camp,  is  still  the  historic  county- 
town,  the  seat  of  its  dignV-,'  and  honor.  England 
rather  looks  down  on  new-n  "le  wealth  unconsecrated 
by  religion,  learning,  blood,  or  traditions  of  arms. 

Although  a  place  of  perhaps  several  thousand  inhab- 
itants less  than  our  Pennsylvania  town,  this  Lancaster 
presents  a  much  more  imposing  appearance.  It  is  built 
entirely  of  stone,  giving  it  a  very  solid  and  substantial 
air,  while  the  tints  of  the  stone,  grays  of  every  hue, 
produce  a  much  handsomer  effect  than  anything  that 
could  be  gotten  from  bricks.  The  central  view  from 
the  old  Main  Street,  looking  up  the  rising  slope  of  the 
hill,  covered  with  quaint  gables  and  buttressed  walls, 
and  finally  culminating  in  the  castellated  masses  of 
John  of  Gaunt's  great  tower,  is  one  of  the  finer  pic- 
tures of  interior  England,  and  architecturally  quite 
striking.  It  is  an  irregular  town  of  narrow  streets, 
rambling  up  and  down  hills  of  even  steeper  grade  than 
those  of  our  own  Lancaster,  and  plunging  every  now 

4 


'-,'     I.,-       :-  I.:- 


41 


five 
three  of 

Oar  roang  lamjftur  of  the 
will  tahcraet  fi»*n  it  all  the  ptagncc  a 

!f!M3>i     -> 
Of    thi 

That  m  the  oalr.aHMddifar.ee.     Yo«  do  «c 
m  grateful  German  word  here,  or  see  the  tar*  of 


40  ENGLISH   TOWNS. 

tive,  two  of  whom  are  in  the  Cabinet.  Preston  sends 
two  Conservatives,  Liverpool  two  Conservatives  aijd  one 
Liberal,  and  Manchester  two  Liberals  and  one  Con- 
servative, these  latter  two  great  towns  just  pairing  off 
each  other's  influence.  The  voting  list  of  Lancashire, 
when  all  the  districts  are  footed  up,  seems  pretty  high, 
but  it  must  be  remembered  that  under  the  English  sys- 
tem one  man  may  easily  cast  three  votes,  or  even  more. 
For  instance,  in  Lancashire,  a  man  living  in  Preston 
or  Liverpool  might  easily  have  three  votes,  thus  : 

1.  If  in  his  town  he  is  a  registered  property-owner 
or  rent-payer,  he  has  a  vote  there.     This  is  the  first, 
and,  according  to  English  feeling,  the  lower  grade  of 
franchise.     The  man  votes  as  one  average,  industrious, 
respectable  subject  of  the  kingdom. 

2.  If  this  same  man  is  of  a  county  family,  owning 
estates  in  the  county,  he  may  also  vote  on  the  county 
list.     Here  he  votes  his  family  birth  and  historic  con- 
nection with  the  kingdom. 

3.  If  this   same   voter,  who   has   already  cast   two 
legitimate  votes,  is  an  educated  man,  he  may  vote  again 
on  the  registry  list  of  his  university,  which  sends  its 
members  to  Parliament.     Here  he  votes  his  education. 

Lastly,  as  far  as  he  may  be  able  to  influence  or  assist 
in  the  appointment  of  a  bishop,  he  also  votes  again,  the 
bishops  being  lords,  who  sit  in  the  upper  House. 

It  is  this  delicately-adopted  system  of  the  representa- 
tion of  interests,  of  birth,  of  education,  of  religion,  of 
classes,  of  labor,  of  money,  etc.,  which  makes  all  mere 
figures  so  deceptive  and  illusory  in  treating  of  English 
politics.  The  English  statesman  resents  the  mathe- 
matical basis  of  representation  as  being  merely  an 
averaging  and  levelling  process. 

English  Lancaster  has  just  three  weekly  newspapers. 
Here,  as  in  the  case  of  Reading,  our  Pennsylvania 
towns  so  far  outstrip  their  old-country  parents  that  any 
comparison  is  out  of  the  question.  It  is  the  same  way 
in  old  Carlisle,  which,  with  a  population  of  thirty- 


LANCASTER.  41 

five  thousand,  publishes  only  weekly  journals,  and  but 
three  of  them. 

Our  young  Lancaster  of  the  New  World — if  you 
will  subtract  fi\m\  it  all  the  presence  and  influence  of 
the  great  German  blood,  which  it  could  so  ill  do  with- 
out— is  a  pretty  fair  reproduction  of  this  old  town. 
That  is  the  only  marked  difference.  You  do  not  hear 
a  grateful  German  word  here,  or  see  the  trace  of  a 
single  Germanic  custom,  usage,  or  tradition. 

There  are  no  great  barns  here ;  no  red-faced  farmer 
boys  with  their  shining  buggies  and  well-fed  horses  in 
the  streets;  no  staid  and  decorous  Mennonite  elders 
with  solid  and  prosperous  air;  no  German  books  or 
papers  or  almanacs  in  the  shop-windows ;  none  and 
nothing  of  that  honest,  strong,  and  historic  race  which 
has  contributed  so  much  to  the  wealth  and  glory  of  out 
Lancaster  County,  and  which  is  now  perhaps  its  bettei 
half, — only  their  English  cousins  of  like  manner  and 
degree.  You  find  here  fresh  and  in  clear  outline  the 
Lancaster  of  our  young  past ;  the  Lancaster  that  clus- 
tered around  the  old-fashioned  court-house ;  the  Lan- 
caster of  old  King  and  Queen  and  Duke  Streets;  the 
Lancaster  of  the  Old  Bar  and  of  the  country  "  manors" 
of  gone  times ;  the  Lancaster  that  used  to  come  in  from 
Carnarvon  and  Coleraiue  and  Little  Britain  and  the 
"  lower  end ;"  the  Lancaster  of  the  Yates  and  Cun- 
ninghams and  Lardners  and  Montgomerys  and  Frank- 
lyns  and  Jenkins  and  Bartons  laid  away  in  their  family 
graves  forever.  Here  it  is,  drinking  pert  and  sitting 
in  stately  old  Windsor  chairs  and  burning  wax  tapers 
and  swearing  at  dignified  butlers  and  powdered  foot- 
men yet. 

In  their  respective  relation  to  the  adjacent  country 
there  is  a  strong  resemblance  between  the  two  Lancas- 
ters.  Lancaster  of  England  is  situated  on  the  pleasing 
river  Lune,  which,  when  the  tide  is  out,  is  nearly  as 
respectable  a  stream  as  our  Conestoga  Creek ;  when  the 
tide  is  in  it  is  something  larger.  While  the  county  of 

4* 


42  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

Lancashire  is  distinctively  kwown  as  a  cotton-spinning 
district,  that  portion  of  it  which  lies  immediately 
around  Lancaster  town  and  forms  its  beautiful  setting 
is  a  fine,  rich  agricultural  sweep  of  land  rolling  pretty 
much  as  do  the  farm-fields  from  Lancaster  to  Millers- 
ville,  in  Pennsylvania.  It  looks  rather  richer  and 
more  bountiful  than  our  land,  because  the  generous 
green  of  the  meadows  and  fields  is  not  broken  by  the 
arid  lines  of  dusty  roads  and  dry  fences.  The  sweep 
around  this  Lancaster  is  one  broad  field  of  living  green, 
the  various  divisions  of  property  marked  only  by  the 
darker  olive  shades  of  the  hedges.  The  roads  are  nar- 
row and  deep,  and  so  hedged  by  hawthorns  and  box 
and  bushes  as  to  be  hardly  seen,  and  not  at  all  to  break 
the  picture  of  the  landscape. 

Altogether,  there  is  quite  a  family  resemblance  be- 
tween the  two  towns, — their  people  and  life.  There  is 
the  same  size,  the  same  equable  comfort  and  rest  and 
substance, — the  golden  mean  of  blessing.  The  general 
features  of  every-day  life — on  the  outside  and  out  of 
doors  at  least — are  much  the  same.  There  is  a  reason- 
able distribution  of  wealth  among  the  people  of  both 
towns,  and  a  comparative  freedom  from  want, 

Lancaster  of  England — with  its  solid  structures  of 
stone ;  its  fine  gray  tints  unbroken  by  the  glare  of  red 
brick  or  white  paint ;  its  old-fashioned  domestic  houses, 
with  quaint  armorial  bearings  or  scriptural  legends 
carved  above  the  doorways;  with  its  venerable  walls 
and  gateways  clad  with  ivy  and  lichens;  with  its  famous 
round  castle,  which  has 

"  Oft  rolled  back  the  tide  of  war," 

and  from  whose  parapets  surly  cannon  are  even  now 
trained  on  the  peaceful  fields;  with  its  mediaeval  legacies 
of  dungeon  and  keep ;  with  its  authentic  traditions  of 
Roman  empire ;  with  its  towers  and  turrets  and  spires 
of  modern  time  and  use ;  with  the  British  soldiery  of 


LANCASTER.  43 

to-day,  brilliant  in  scarlet  and  gold,  filing  through  its 
streets  to  the  calls  of  drum  and  bugle ;  with  its  local 
peasant  dialect,  unintelligible  to  American  ears,  and  the 
clang  of  the  weoden  shoe — is  by  far  the  more  pictu- 
resque and  impressive  of  the  two  places. 

Lancaster  of  Pennsylvania,  however,  has  solid  ad- 
vantages over  the  older  city.  She  has  already  public 
buildings  far  beyond  those  of  this  town  at  the  same  age. 
Give  the  Lancaster  of  the  New  World  one  thousand 
years  more  and  I  doubt  not  she  will  be  a  greater  city 
than  even  this  one,  and  in  tradition,  already  in  her  in- 
fancy, has  she  not  the  names  of  Muhlenbergand  Mifflin 
and  Fulton  and  Buchanan  and  Thaddous  Stevens, — men 
as  great  and  historical  as  any  of  the  heroes  of  the  Wars 
of  the  Roses?  She  was  for  a  brief  space,  in  times  of 
turmoil,  also  the  capital  of  the  nation,  a  seat  of  govern- 
ment just  as  respectable  as  the  court  of  Henry  IV., 
which  for  a  short  time  was  held  here. 

And  to-day,  in  many  of  those  things  which  mark  the 
strength  of  this  century, — in  newspapers,  in  schools,  in 
broad  streets,  in  commodious  pavements,  in  spacious 
hotels,  in  fine  stores  and  the  goods  in  them, — our  Penn- 
sylvania town  is  far  ahead  of  its  respectable  old  English 
parent.  The  glory  of  this  Lancaster  lies  in  its  past : 
ours  is  yet  to  come. 

There  is  one  fact  forces  itself  on  one  in  drawing  this 
parallel  between  the  two  towns  from  the  old  home  site 
which  is  rather  strange  and  somewhat  sad.  The  name 
of  our  new  Lancaster,  the  establishing  it  as  the  seat  of 
d  con n tv  of  Lancaster,  the  naming  of  the  streets  after 
the  old  ones  even  to  the  detail  of  rank,  King  and 
Queen  and  Prince  being  the  great  streets  here  and  the 
others  mentioned  minor  ones, — all  force  the  conclusion 
that  our  American  Lancaster  was  laid  out  by  English- 
men of  Lancashire,  who  lovingly  traced  in  the  soil  of 
the  New  World  the  very  lines  and  features  of  their  old 
home.  Yet  in  the  county  paper  of  to-day,  on  the  signs 
of  the  shops  in  the  streets,  on  the  mouldering  and 


44  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

sunken  tombs  and  gravestones  in  the  old  churchyards, 
I  have  not  found  a  single  one  of  the  old  colonial  family 
names  of  the  Lancaster  of  Penn.    Literally,  "  the  places 
that  once  knew  them  know  them  no  more." 
LANCASTER,  ENGLAND. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

OXFORD. 

AN  IDYLLIC  SEAT  OF  LEARNING  AND  CONSERVATISM — CURI- 
OUS SUPERSTITIOUS  SURVIVALS — HISTORICAL  DEVELOPMENT 
OF  THE  MODERN  COLLEGE — THE  AMERICAN  AND  THE  ENG- 
LISH COLLEGE — ECCLESIASTICAL  OXFORD — THE  MARTYRS — 
AN  OLD-FASHIONED  ENGLISH  COUNTRY  INN  AND  FOUR-IN- 
HAND  TRAVEL  —  GENTLEMAN-COACHING  IN  ENGLAND  —  A 
COUNTY  INSTITUTION. 

"  A  citie  seated  riche  in  everye  thinge, 
Girt  with  woode  and  water." 

OXFORD — the  ford  where,  in  old  Saxon  times,  the 
oxen  crossed  the  river,  and  now  the  ford  where,  for  five 
hundred  years,  England's  youth  have  crossed  a  greater 
stream — is  a  charming  picture  of  rest  and  sylvan  beauty, 
— an  academic  idyl.  It  is  a  picturesque  old  place  of 
that  medisevo-ecclesiastical  architecture,  half  religious, 
half  military,  which  tells  so  impressively  the  story  of 
its  day ;  a  town  of  towers  and  turrets  and  spires ;  of 
ancient  walls  and  buttresses  and  quaint  gargoyles ;  of 
glorious  stained-glass  windows,  oriel  and  rose  and 
arched  and  Catharine;  of  lovely  academic  garden- 
parks;  of  quadrangles  and  chapels  and  cloisters  for 
the  monks  of  letters;  of  forgotten  bastions  and  re- 
doubts, and  long,  stern  walls  with  battlemented  walks, 
now  peacefully  crumbling  under  ivy  and  roses;  of 
stately  oaks  and  beeches,  and  grand  old  trees  venerable 
with  moss  and  lichen  and  tenderly  watched  and  cared 


OXFORD.  45 

for  in  their  green  old  age ;  of  Gothic  arches  and  gate- 
ways and  falling  ruins ;  of  wooded  walks  and  gentle 
waters ;  of  smooth,  soft  meadows,  all  shaven  and  shorn, 
"  and  fields  of  living  green ;"  of  noble  bits  of  forest, 
carefully  tended  and  stocked  with  antlered  tenants ; 
of  prisons  of  the  martyrs  and  precious  altars  where,  in 
flame  and  fire,  they  won  their  crowns ;  of  crosses  and 
statues  of  great  men  and  good  women  and  strange 
beasts,  grotesque  symbolic  images  in  stone ;  of  quiet 
churchyards  and  chiming  bells  and  peaceful  graves; 
of  gray  stone  and  clinging  green  and  ancient  gables ; 
of  scented  gardens  filled  with  old-fashioned  English 
flowers  with  homely  Saxon  names ;  of  rustic  inns ;  of 
classic  streams  and  time-stained  halls  consecrated  by  the 
traditions  of  faith  and  learning,  and  hallowed  with  the 
names  and  memories  of  the  great  and  good  of  England, 

"  Were  ever  river-banks  so  fair, 
Gardens  so  fit  for  nightingales,  as  these? 
Was  ever  town  so  rich  in  court  and  tower?" 

When  the  American  college  graduate  sees  all  this 
wealth  of  culture  and  of  the  tradition  and  legend  of 
learning  which  is  lavished  so  generously  on  the  founda- 
tions of  scholarship  here,  he  feels  sharply  the  bareness 
and  poverty  of  the  surroundings  of  our  best  academic 
life.  The  English  student,  even  if  he  never  studies  much, 
may  get  unconsciously,  almost  by  absorption,  a  generous 
education.  His  training,  apart  from  the  tuition  of  the 
schools,  is  liberalizing  and  humane,  for  he  enters  at  once 
in  his  daily  life  and  being  into  the  fellowship  of  cen- 
turies of  learning  and  intellectual  dower.  It  is  his  in- 
heritance. 

I  think  no  American  alumnus  will  ever  visit  an 
English  university  without  a  feeling  of  poignant  regret 
for  the  opportunities  which  have  not  been  his  and  a 
vain  instinctive  wish  that  he  might  be  born  again. 
But  it  is  not  fair  to  compare  our  young  American  col- 
leges with  the  English  school,  the  heir  of  all  the 


46  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

of  Anglo-Saxon  culture,  piety,  and  intellectual  growth. 
Not  only  are  they  separated  by  centuries  of  care  and 
sacrifice  and  endowment,  but  to-day  they  represent 
different  conditions  of  society,  and  different  stages  in 
the  development  of  history  and  education. 

Nor  would  it  be  wise  for  an  American  student  to 
take  his  full  academic  course  in  an  English  university, 
however  superior  the  advantage  and  pleasure  as  far  as 
scholarship  and  cultivation  are  concerned.  The  friend- 
ships one  makes  at  college  will  largely  influence  and 
control  his  future  life,  and  for  Americans  this  associa- 
tion should  be  American.  An  American  boy  who 
studies  at  a  foreign  school  simply  expatriates  himself 
for  life.  He  comes  home  a  stranger  in  his  own  land. 

I  would,  however,  strongly  advise  every  college- 
bred  man  of  our  country  who  is  yet  within,  say,  five 
or  six  years  of  his  graduation  to  complete  .and  finish 
his  course  by  a  year  at  Cambridge  or  Oxford.  Such 
one  year  of  post-graduate  study  will  sum  up  and  round 
off  all  that  has  gone  before,  and  in  the  way  of  broad- 
ening thought  and  widening  the  range  of  his  intellec- 
tual activities  double  the  value  of  all  the  years  of  his 
American  cursus.  Even  one  day  in  Oxford  or  Cam- 
bridge will  yield  a  rich  return  to  a  trained  mind  from 
our  schools.  The  acquaintance  made,  too,  of  English 
and  continental  young  men — men  who  will  rise  to  power 
and  influence  in  foreign  nations — will  always  extend 
one's  power  and  influence  at  home  if  he  can  make 
them  available  from  a  wide  basis  of  home  acquaint- 
ance. 

If,  however,  one  must  be  restricted  to  a  single  course 
of  a  few  brief  years,  for  an  American  the  American 
college,  with  all  its  barrenness,  its  lack  of  refinement, 
its  poverty  of  intellectual  wealth,  is  the  proper  place. 
The  two  schools  represent  different  stages  of  society, 
and  the  progress  of  learning  and  the  education  of  the 
American  college  will,  on  the  whole,  best  answer  the 
present  demands  of  American  life,  social  and  political. 


OXFORD.  47 

Education,  in  our  Anglo-Saxon  times,  has  so  far  de- 
veloped three  grand  stages  or  epochs: 

I.  The  monk  and  the  convent  represent  the  first  stage 
of  learning  in  our  modern  civilization,  or  renewal  of  lost 
civilizations.     During  this  period  education  was  a  mo- 
nopoly, held  strictly  and  exclusively  within  the  control 
of  the  Church.    This  was  the  mediaeval  period.    Edu 
cation  was  shut  up  in  the  cloister.      The  very  word 
claustrum  describes  it. 

II.  Next  comes  the  fellow  and  the  college.      The 
modern  college,  with  its  foundation,  its  endowed  and 
permanent  masterships  and  fellowships,  all  the  fortu- 
nate holders  of  these  franchises  housed  and  living  to- 
gether with  their  precious  stores  of  tradition,  association, 
honors,  books,  manuscripts,  and  appliances  of  learning, 
is  the  legitimate  child  of  the  convent,  and  has  been 
often  actually  and  literally  its  heir.     Here,  too,  educa- 
tion was  at  first  held  to  the  Church,  but  within  recent 
centuries  it  has  been  emancipated  to  the  learned  profes- 
sions,— comparatively    limited    bounds.      Knowledge, 
however,  was  still  in  collegia,  and  not  free.    This  is  the 
period  of  modern  Europe  and  the  second  stage. 

III.  Third  comes  a  stage  which  has  not  yet  taken 
definite  shape  or  outline, — the  stage  to  which  we  are 
tending,  and   for  which   the  American  college  in  its 
present  condition  is  the  preparation  and  vestibule.    The 
work  of  this  stage  I  take  to  be  the  emancipation  of 
learning  and  education  from  any  class  bounds,  and  its 
free  distribution  among  all  the  people, — perhaps  even  at 
their  homes, — the  fixed  centre  being  a  limitation  and  a 
thing  of  the  past.     The  system  of  university  examina- 
tions which  now  covers  all  England  like  a  network,  and 
which  Harvard  has  introduced  in  the  United  States,  is 
a  pronounced  movement  in  this  direction.     This  is  the 
period  of  the  near-impending  future. 

We  are  now  in  transition  from  the  second  to  the 
third  stage,  and  must  endure  all  the  unpleasant  features 
of  transitional  existence. 


48  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

But  while  we  may  not  reproduce  the  English  college 
on  our  soil,  we  cannot,  therefore,  affect  to  ignore  or 
despise  it.  We  are  its  heir,  entitled  to  all  its  wealth 
of  life,  just  as  the  college  inherited  the  treasure  and  his- 
toric existence  of  the  convent.  And  it  should  be  our 
study  to  get  this  in  all  its  fulness,  and  as  soon  as  pos- 
sible. There  are  many  features  of  English  university 
life  which  might  at  once  be  advantageously  adopted  or 
adapted  here,  and  I  think  a  most  useful  training  for  an 
American  college  president  or  professor  would  be  a 
personal  study  of  English  university  life, — its  organi- 
zation, academic  discipline,  relations  to  society,  and 
daily  school  and  individual  life.  There  could  be  no 
better  qualification  for  an  academic  leader. 

Oxford,  as  a  village,  is  a  far  lovelier  and  more  pic- 
turesque place  than  Cambridge.  Indeed,  as  a  picture 
to  a  stranger  it  is  one  of  the  loveliest  spots  in  all 
England,  and  I  much  wonder  that  it  is  not  more  of  a 
place  of  summer  resort  for  travellers,  especially  as  dur- 
ing the  long  vacation  chambers  are  to  be  had  cheap. 
Living,  indeed,  is  always  cheap  as  compared  with  the 
cost  of  our  life.  I  noticed  in  Oxford  a  placard  offering 
fourteen  small  houses  for  rent  at  a  gross  rental  of  one  hun- 
dred and  fourteen  pounds.  They  were  houses  for  work- 
ing-people, four  rooms  and  back-closet  and  shed,  built  of 
solid  stone,  well  finished,  in  a  healthful  and  clean  lo- 
cality. This  is  about  forty  dollars  a  year  of  our  money 

Apart  from  its  academic  life  and  glory,  Oxford  pre- 
sents many  features  of  attraction  to  the  visitor.  Its 
authentic  record  dates  from  A.D.  900,  and  one  reads 
the  history  of  England  down  from  that  time  in  its  ven- 
erable walls  and  crumbling  ruins. 

It  has  religious  associations  and  memories  of  surpass- 
ing interest  to  Protestant  faith.  In  its  streets  once 
flamed  the  most  famous  fires  of  martyrdom  in  Eng- 
land ;  m  its  halls  and  chambers  preached,  in  its  towers 


OXFORD.  49 

were  imprisoned,  and  from  them  led  to  death,  the  death- 
less martyrs.  An  imposing  memorial  cross,  after  the 
general  fashion  of  the  handsome  Queen  Eleanor  design, 
erected  in  the  middle  of  a  handsome  street,  marks  the 
neighborhood  of  the  spot  where  Archbishop  Cranmer 
and  Bishops  Ridley  and  Latimer  were  burned  to  death.* 

'  "  Then  God  was  with  them,  and  the  glare 

Of  their  death-fires  still  lights  the  land  to  truth." 

This  splendid  monument  was  erected  in  1841,  and  I 
take  it  was  intended  as  a  mute  and  imperishable  memo- 
rial against  the  Tractarian  movement,  then  in  alarming 
progress.  From  a  stern  and  gray  church-tower  still  stand- 
ing near  this  spot  you  see  the  window  from  which  that  ex- 
cellent authority,  Burnet,  says  Cranmer  in  prison  looked 
out  and  saw  his  comrades,  Kidley  and  Latimer,  burned 
at  the  stake.  He  was  near  enough  to  see  their  faces. 

There  are  several  of  these  martyrs'  towers  in  Oxford 
in  which  distinguished  scholars  and  prelates  and  states- 
men were  confined  for  conscience'  sake,  and  it  is  depress- 
ing to  think  that  most  of  them  were  church -towers, — 
parts  of  houses  dedicated  to  worship  and  to  the  preach- 
ing of  a  gospel  of  love,  and  that  men  did  and  could 
worship  in  them  at  the  very  time  they  were  desecrated 
to  such  unholy  and  unchristian  uses.  In  those  dark 
days  of  Oxford  church  towers  seem  to.  have  been  built 
with  perhaps  an  ulterior  ueye  to  the  glory  of  God," 
but  practically  and  immediately  for  the  purpose  of  con- 
fining in  them  such  persons  as  differed  in  views  and 
opinions  from  the  builders  or  custodians. 

Among  the  records  of  Oxford  are  two  sickening  bills 
of  the  executioner  in  these  martyrdoms,  charging  by 
items  for  the  services  of  his  assistants  and  for  materials, 
fagots,  etc., — significant  now  as  monuments  of  the  con- 

*  The  original  picture,  by  the  way,  of  the  "  Burning  of  Kidley 
and  Latimer  at  Oxford,"  by  Sir  George  Haytes,  left  England 
some  time  ago  for  Philadelphia,  having  been  purchased  by  Mr. 
Latimer,  a  direct  descendant, 
c        d  5 


50  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

•dition  of  civilization  and  religion  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. The  entire  cost  of  the  burning  of  the  two  bishops 
was  £1  5s.  2d.  •  of  Cranmer,  12s. 

Oxford  has  always  been  noted  as  against  Cambridge 
for  its  religious  activity  and  coloring  of  thought.  It 
has  been  in  all  its  history  the  home  of  polemics  and 
controversy  and  doctrine.  From  the  pulpit  and  the 
stake,  and  in  later  and  more  gentle  years  the  "com- 
mons room"  of  its  precincts,  nearly  all  the  great  re- 
ligious movements  of  modern  English  times  have  taken 
their  start.  To-day  I  believe  it  furnishes  a  much  larger 
proportion  of  its  graduates  to  the  orders  of  the  Church 
than  does  its  sister  Cambridge. 

In  the  list  of  its  graduates  you  can  almost  read  the 
religious  and  ecclesiastical  history  of  England. 

Among  them  are  John  Wiclif  the  Reformer,  Tyndal, 
(translator  of  the  Bible  and  martyr),  Archbishop  Laud, 
John  Foxe  ("Book  of  Martyrs"),  Cardinal  Pole  and 
Cardinal  Wolsey,  Archdeacon  Philpot,  martyr,  Bishop 
Hooper,  martyr,  Cardinal  Moreton,  Bishop  Jewell, 
Bishop  Bonner,  "  the  bloody,"  Sir  Matthew  Hale,  Cam- 
pian,  the  noted  Jesuit,  Jeremy  Taylor,  Richard  Cecil, 
Bishop  Heber,  Dean  Mil  man,  both  the  Wesleys,  John 
and  Charles,  Hooker,  the  writer,  Bishop  Butler  ("Anal- 
ogy"), Sir  Thomas  More  and  Sir  Thomas  Browne 
("  Religio  Medici"),  Bishop  Lowth,  Dr.  South,  John 
Keble,  Rev.  F.  W.  Robertson,  Dr.  Edward  Young, 
Archbishop  Whately,  Cardinals  Manning  and  John 
Henry  Newman,  and  Dr.  Pusey.  Cranmer,  Ridley, 
and  Latimer  were  Cambridge  men,  but  they  were  all 
burnt  here. 

I  might  lengthen  out  this  list  almost  indefinitely  by 
going  into  the  names  of  distinguished  living  clergy  and 
dignitaries  in  the  English  Church,  would  it  not  seem 
invidious  to  make  selection.  I  have  mentioned  none 
of  the  men  now  alive  save  only  the  two  able  princes  of 
the  Roman  empire  who  claim  to  rule  in  England.  But 
a  glance  at  this  list  shows  that  the  great  Methodist  and 


OXFORD.  51 

Tractarian  movements,  so  unlike  in  character  and  tend- 
ency, wore  cradled  here ;  that  the  rehabilitation  of  the 
Roman  Church  on  English  soil  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury found  its  leaders  here ;  that  many  of  the  minor 
currents  of  modern  theological  and  religious  thought 
started  here;  and  that  here  surged  in  merciless  force  the 
fluctuating  waves  of  the  English  Reformation,  out  of 
whose  conflict,  through  fire  and  sword,  arose  the  present 
Churches  of  England. 

Sydney  Smith  and  Dean  Swift,  who  illustrate  how 
oddly  the  English  semi-social,  semi-political  system  of 
filling  pulpits  sometimes  works,  were  also  Oxford  men. 

Oxford  has  been  in  all  its  history  distinctively  the 
Church  school,  and  to-day  stands  nearer  the  cloister 
than  Cambridge)  which,  in  many  features,  is  tentatively 
stretching  forward  to  the  new  era. 

Oxford,  like  Cambridge,  has  a  university  press, 
known  the  world  over  for  the  finish  and  scholarly 
thoroughness  of  its  work.  The  distinctive  feature  of 
the  Oxford  press  has  come  to  be  the  printing  of  the 
English  Bible.  Here  you  get  the  authorized  King 
James  version  in  absolute  purity  of  text,  every  letter 
and  point  established  with  critical  accuracy  and  judg- 
ment, and  the  whole  book  produced  in  the  highest 
finish  of  paper,  composition,  press-work,  and  binding. 
It  is  the  best  memento  to  bring  home  from  Oxford,  and 
you  can  get  it  in  editions  of  every  kind  and  style  and 
price.  It  claims  to  be  the  best-printed  Bible  in  the 
world,  and,  I  suppose,  is,  and  certainly  it  is  invested 
\\ith  more  interesting  traditions  and  associations  than 
any  edition  that  issues  from  any  other  press,  for  it 
comes  from  the  school-house  of  Wiclif  and  Tyndal, 
and  the  martyr-fires  of  Cranmer  and  Ridley  in  Oxford's 
streets  made  the  circulation  of  our  English  version 
possible. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  traces  of  an  extinct  re- 


52  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

ligion  survive  longest  in  the  forms  of  the  new  /eligion 
which  takes  the  place  of  the  dead  one.  Long  after  the 
life  of  the  old  faith  has  fled  it  still  is  preserved  in  the 
ceremonies  of  the  new.  In  Italy  to-day  nearly  every 
striking  f£te  and  feature  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  is  traceable  to  customs  and  rites  of  the  old 
classic  faiths  which  held  sway  there  before  the  Christian 
era.  So  in  Oxford,  a  historic  religious  centre  of  Eng- 
land, and,  as  the  centres  of  learning  always  are,  a  most 
conservative  spot,  the  vestiges  of  the  forgotten  beliefs 
and  usages  of  early  paganism  in  Britain  are  clearly 
visible  in  a  number  of  traditional  ceremonies  which 
have  been  handed  down  from  the  centuries,  and  whose 
observance  is  yet  jealously  maintained,  although  their 
meaning  and  original  life  are  long  lost. 

The  beautiful  Magdalen  Tower  is  the  pride  of  Ox- 
ford, and  well  it  may  be,  for  in  grace  and  symmetry 
of  architectural  design,  and  the  lovely  picture  of  culti- 
vated glebe  and  wood  and  water  which  surrounds  it,  it 
is  one  of  the  finest  sights  of  England. 

On  the  castellated  summit  of  this  tower,  every  first 
day  of  May,  "  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning,"  the  choir 
of  St.  Mary  Magdalen  College,  in  vestments,  assemble 
and  chant  a  Latin  anthem,  and  in  reverential  orison 
hail  the  rising  of  the  sun.  Hundreds  of  people  gather 
on  the  streets  and  in  the  parks  at  the  foot  of  the  tower 
to  witness  this  ceremony.  This  matin  rite  means  noth- 
ing any  more  now,  but  is  admitted  to  be  the  survival 
of  some  pagan  solemnity, — as  most  May-day  customs 
are, — probably  of  sun  worship. 

In  Queen's  College,  to  this  hour,  the  "ryghte  merrie 
jouste  of  ye  boare's  heade"  is  yet  observed  with  cere- 
monial state  on  every  Christmas  day.  At  dinner  in 
the  great  arched  college  hall  on  that  day  a  fine  old 
boar's  head,  bedecked  with  bays,  is  solemnly  borne 
around  the  oaken  floor,  while  the  college  chant  the 
sonorous  old  carol  whose  words  and  music  are  so 
familiar  to  academic  memory : 


OXFORD.  53 

)ri  differo 

Keddens  laudes  Domino. 
The  boar's  head  in  hand  bring  I, 
With  garlands  gay  and  rosemary  ; 
I  pray  you  all  sing  merrily : 

Qui  estis  in  convivio." 

This  observance  is  most  probably  a  transmitted 
vestige  of  the  Feast  of  Freyr,  the  Scandinavian  god 
of  peace  and  plenty,  held  at  Yule-tide,  when  a  boar  was 
always  sacrificed  in  his  honor  and  as  an  offering  of 
thanks  and  gratitude.  The  words  of  this  semi-pagan 
canticle  date  from  the  sixteenth  century,  and,  although 
the  whole  thing  is  a  Norse  relic,  it  was  certainly  a  more 
Christian  diversion  than  burning  bishops. 

Non-academic  Oxford  is  a  typical  English  village  of 
the  prettiest  kind, — a  village  of  green  hedges  framing 
picturesque  bits  of  wood  and  valley  and  charming 
homes;  of  slumbering  churchyards  toned  with  gray 
tombstones  and  dark  yews  ;  of  quaint  gablas  and  ram- 
bling streets  stocked  with  old-fashioned  country  inns, 
each  one  the  fitting  background  of  an  ever-changing 
picture  of  rural  sights.  All  the  traditional  inn  names 
of  England  seem  to  be  gathered  here,  and  they  make 
one  of  the  features  of  the  town.  There  are  the  King's 
Head,  and  the  Red  Lion,  and  the  Saracen,  the  Three 
Jolly  Farmers  and  the  Three  Cups,  the  Maiden- 
head, and  the  Crown,  and  the  Roebuck,  and  others  I 
cannot  recall. 

I  put  up  at  the  Mitre, — the  traditional  old  county 
and  university  inn, — an  interesting  historical  picture  in 
itself  of  past  social  life  and  customs  in  England.  The 
Mitre  is  to-day  but  a  survival  of  a  past  generation, 
of  a  glory  of  Oxford  that  is  gone;  but  it  is  still 
an  instructive  and  pleasing  remain  to  an  American 
stranger.  It  is  an  old-fashioned  county  inn  of  the 
once  aristocratic  kind,  of  a  High-Church  and  horse- 
racing  flavor,  redolent  of  old  port  and  strong  red  ale, 
patronized  by  young  country  squires,  who  lunch  on  cold 

5* 


54  ENGLISH   TOWNS. 

ham  and  champagne,  and  by  broad-shou.  dered,  florid- 
faced,  cheery  Englishmen  born  of  the  soil,  and  "who 
they  themselves  have  said  it."  Its  very  name  is  a  de- 
fiant shout  for  prelacy  and  Establishment,  an  echo  of  a 
war-cry  which  carries  you  back  to  the  old  days  of 
trouble  and  party-passion, — the  days  of  Church  and 
Crown. 

You  enter  through  an  unpretending  wooden  door, 
heavily  barred  and  crossfastened,  into  a  low  broad  hall, 
and  the  first  sight  which  greets  your  eyes  are  stout 
rounds  of  beef  and  generous  flitches  of  bacon  and  game 
of  various  kinds  hung  by  hooks  to  the  unplaned  rafters 
overhead ;  you  step  hastily  from  under  to  avoid  the 
drops  of  fat  which  threaten  the  unwary  lounger  (the 
experienced  habitues,  I  soon  found  out,  knew  just 
where  to  stand),  and  in  doing  so  confront  the  useful 
young  woman  who  answers  as  bar-maid,  room-clerk,  and 
cashier  in  a  British  inn,  who  welcomes  you  personally 
and  pleasantly  to  the  house.  Some  four-in-hand  coach- 
ing-whips of  approved  pattern  and  trial  ornament  the 
hall-way,  professionally  and  gracefully  coiled  on  the 
walls.  The  guards'  loud  livery  hangs  on  the  pegs  with 
some  gentlemen's  overcoats.  Several  handsome  and 
affectionate  hounds  mingle  intelligently  with  the  other 
functionaries,  guests,  and  dignitaries,  and  you  know  you 
are  at  a  respectable  centre  of  coaching,  hunting,  racing, 
and  English  country  sports  generally. 

But  the  bishop's  mitre  is  the  trade-mark  of  the 
house  and  the  historic  crest  of  the  place.  This  prelatical 
symbol  confronts  you  everywhere  and  all  the  time.  It 
is  panelled  in  the  halls,  painted  on  the  walls,  carved  on 
the  doors,  burnt  in  the  china,  engraved  on  the  glass,  the 
silver,  and  the  pewter,  and  woven  in  the  linen.  It 
blushes  through  your  wine,  lies  placidly  under  the  water 
in  your  wash-basin,  consecrates  the  stables  and  dog-ken- 
nels, and  seems  to  rest  in  contented  benediction  on  your 
ale-tankard.  Even  the  napkins  are  loyally  folded  ID 
this  respectable  episcopal  device. 


OXFORD.  55 

But  it  is  the  benediction  of  the  past  which  cornea 
down  on  the  American  traveller  when  he  enters  these 
old-fashioned  doors.  The  Mitre  claims  to  have  stood 
here  from  A.D.  1400,  dispensing  food  and  shelter  for  man 
and  beast.  Fifteen  generations  of  fathers  and  sons  have 
purchased  its  hospitalities.  In  its  low-ceilinged  coffee- 
rooms  men  sat,  near  five  hundred  years  ago,  much  as 
we  sit  now,  and  when  they  talked  politics  or  told  the 
news  they  spoke  of  Aginoourt  and  glorious  King  Harry, 
of  the  execution  for  treason  of  the  Lollards,  of  John 
Huss  burnt,  of  the  strange  maid  Joan,  the  sorceress  of 
Arc,  luring  English  soldiers  to  defeat  and  shameful 
death  on  the  fields  of  France,  or  of  how  the  rude  but 
resolute  Parliaments  of  England  were  wrestling  with 
the  crafty  and  learned  legates  of  the  pope.  This  is  the 
Mitre  tavern  which  the  American  crosses  the  seas  to 
see,  and  which,  I  think,  his  English  cousin  on  the 
spot  never  sees. 

The  Mitre  tavern  of  Oxford,  however,  as  it  exists  in 
the  flesh  to-day,  is  a  thing  of  the  past,  and  I  cannot 
conscientiously  recommend  it  to  the  modern  traveller. 
The  times  have  changed  and  it  has  not  changed  with 
them,  except,  perhaps,  to  keep  abreast  with  the  modern 
extravagant  prices.  Flavor  and  picturesque  traditions 
are  very  good  in  their  way,  but  they  will  neither  feed, 
lodge,  nor  care  for  one's  comfort  and  cleanliness.  There 
are  other  and  better  hostelries  now  in  Oxford, — those 
of  our  own  century. 

The  link  which  connects  the  Mitre  with  the  present 
time,  and  drags  it,  half-alive,  into  this  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, is  stage-coaching.  I  entered  Oxford  on  the  top 
of  a  stage-coach  and  left  it  in  the  same  glory,  and 
warmly  advise  every  traveller  for  pleasure  or  study  to 
do  the  same.  One  sees  the  country,  the  estates,  and  the 
common  people  for  miles  as  he  can  by  no  other  way, 
and,  by  a  half-mental,  half-physical  process,  arrives 
at  the  consciousness  of  the  Englishman's  conception 


56  ENGLISH   TOWNS. 

of  the  height  of  human  happiness.  The  Mitre,  by 
virtue  of  its  lineage  and  traditions,  is  the  hostel  where 
"  the  coach"  puts  up,  and  hence  its  raison  d'etre  and 
existence  now. 

Four-in-hand  stage-coaching  in  England  is  something 
more  than  a  rich  man's  amusement.  It  is  an  institution. 
It  is  the  assertion  of  a  national  and  class  tradition,  and 
when  an  English  gentleman  assumes  charge  for  a  sea- 
son of  a  coach  line  it  is  looked  on  as  a  patriotic  act, 
and  the  man  himself  in  doing  so  is  deemed  to  have  de- 
served well  of  his  country. 

The  stage  line  from  Oxford  via  London  to  Cambridge 
is  owned  and  driven  by  a  gentleman  of  the  county, 
Captain  B., — his  commission  in  the  local  militia,  I  be- 
lieve,— who  pleasantly  gave  the  full  details  of  his  work 
as  we  drove  along.  His  line  of  road  is  one  hundred 
and  twenty  miles,  and  his  coach  stable  is  stocked  with 
just  one  hundred  and  twenty  horses, — a  horse  to  the 
mile.  He  drives  this  entire  route  in  one  day,  return- 
ing the  next,  and  resting  only  on  Sunday.  The  schedule 
time  either  way  is  twelve  hours,  starting  from  the 
Mitre,  Oxford,  on  Monday  at  nine  o'clock  A.M.,  and 
pulling  up  at  The  Bull,  Cambridge,  at  nine  o'clock  P.M., 
reversing  the  trip  on  Tuesday,  and  so  on  through  the 
week.  This  schedule  allows  thirty  minutes  in  London 
for  luncheon. 

Captain  B.,  a  gentleman  of  about  thirty -six,  of 
wealth  and  position,  does  this  work  regularly  every  day 
for  a  season  of  some  five  months  each  year.  I  spent  a 
week  at  Oxford,  and  also  at  Cambridge,  and  was  person^ 
ally  witness  to  the  unfailing  punctuality  of  departure  and 
arrival  at  both  places.  There  is  no  railway  in  our  country 
or  in  England  which  does  better, — perhaps  none  which 
does  so  well.  He  and  his  coach  were  immensely  popular 
all  along  the  line.  The  little  villages  were  always  in  a 
tumult  as  we  rolled  through  them.  All  day  every  wagon 
or  carriage  of  high  or  low  degree  drew  off  and  gave  the 
road  to  "  the  coach  ;"  the  ladies  were  gathered  at  many 


OXFORD.  57 

a  tempting- looking  hall  or  park  gate  to  see  the  spirited 
horses,  well  in  hand,  dash  by  foaming  and  glossy.  The 
landed  gentry  of  the  neighborhood  frequently  timed  their 
walks  so  as  to  come  in  with  us  at  the  changing-places  and 
exchange  a  word  of  greeting  or  welcome.  Every  one, 
high  and  low,  gentle  and  simple,  the  entire  route 
through,  knew  all  the  teams  and  their  respective 
merits,  and  every  inn  and  station  was  full  of  tales  and 
legends  of  them  and  their  driver.  From  one  end  of 
the  drive  to  the  other  the  coach  was  a  county  institution 
and  the  captain  was  a  county  hero,  and  to  understand 
the  meaning  of  this  you  must  remember  that  "  the 
county"  is  the  corner-stone  and  foundation  of  English 
life.  " 

Captain  B.  had  perfected  with  a  master-hand  every 
arrangement  of  detail  in  his  enterprise,  and  both  the 
safety  and  pleasure  of  the  passengers  were  looked  after 
with  scrupulous  regard.  He  carried  with  him  three 
servants,  a  guard,  a  vaiet,  and  a  relay  driver  in  case  of 
emergency.  While  everything  was  thus  provided  to 
support  and  sustain  him  and  keep  him  in  good  condi- 
tion, he  personally  did  the  work  of  driving,  and  it  was 
one  whose  magnitude  and  steadiness  would,  I  think, 
appal  most  American  gentlemen.  It  was  not  a  party 
or  an  excursion,  recollect,  or  a  spurt,  but  regular  daily 
work,  in  wet  weather  or  fine, — this  year  nearly  every 
day  wet, — and  carried  on  often  without  even  the  relief 
of  a  congenial  companion. 

At  the  end  of  the  season,  the  captain  told  me,  he  sells 
all  his  horses  by  auction  at  Tattersall's,  and  sometimes 
makes  on  them.  Having  been  driven  for  a  season  in 
the  coach  is  a  good  character  for  a  horse  and  commends 
him  in  the  market.  It  is  a  guarantee  of  careful  and 
experienced  training.  Part  of  the  work  and  pleasure 
of  coaching  during  the  season  is  the  breaking  in  of  the 
new  horses. 

There  is  no  one  day  of  English  travel  which  is  better 
worth  taking  than  this  enjoyable  four-in-hand  drive 


58  ENGLISH   TOWNS. 

from  Oxford  to  Cambridge,  or  vice  versd  if  you  are  at 
Cambridge  first.  You  see  five  counties  of  England, 
much  of  its  best  farm  land  and  southern  scenery.  Yon 
enter  London  and  leave  it  on  a  seat  from  which  you 
have  a  view  such  as  you  can  get  in  no  other  mode  of 
conveyance.  You  see  the  city  shading  into  the  country 
for  miles  and  miles  on  either  side,  and  gain  an  idea  of 
its  vast  size  and  of  the  dense  population  of  rural  Eng- 
land such  as  no  reading,  statistics,  or  thinking  will  give 
you.  In  London  you  rest  half  an  hour  and  lunch  at 
the  White  Horse  Cellar,  just  as  English  gentry  were 
supposed  to  have  clone  a  hundred  years  ago.  It  is  a 
veritable  cellar,  down  steps,  and  with  a  humble  and 
unmarked  front,  but  right  in  the  centre  of  fashionable 
Piccadilly,  and  preserved  in  all  its  original  features  with 
pious  care. 

And  best  of  all  you  see  the  English  stage-coach  in  its 
glory, — the  struggling  survival  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. This  is  a  historic  study,  and  alone  is  a  picture 
worth  coming  to  England  for.  It  is  a  sight  to  see  the 
coach  roll  off:  it  is  a  greater  sight  to  see  it  come  in  at 
the  end  of  the  day  amid  the  popular  acclaim  and  en- 
thusiasm that  might  attend  a  victorious  general  return- 
ing from  conquest  and  battles. 

Fully  an  hour  before  the  time  of  starting  the  boys 
and  idle  men  of  the  town  begin  to  gather  around  the 
main  court-yard  and  gaze  in  silent  and  satisfied  contem- 
plation on  the  great  lumbering  red-and-yellow  vehicle 
which  stands  empty  and  unhorsed  before  the  door. 
Then,  in  due  time,  the  stately  guard  makes  his  appear- 
ance with  a  burden  of  responsibility  upon  his  serious 
features.  One  or  more  young  porters  attend  his  decorous 
footsteps.  A  hush  falls  upon  the  vulgar  crowd,  and 
then,  in  measured  and  authoritative  tone,  begins  the 
issuance  of  official  orders.  Ah  !  it  is  a  sight  to  see  the 
grandeur  of  this  functionary,  conscious  that  the  eyes  of 
all  the  couniy  are  upon  him,  in  gorgeous  livery  and 
high  beaver  hut  and  huge  bouquet  in  button-hole, 


OXFORD.  59 

pinned  there  by  the  buxom  barmaid ;  the  ministerial 
air  with  which  he  determines  the  proper  location  of  the 
luggage  ;  the  judicial  gravity  with  which  he  decrees  for 
or  against  a  trunk;  the  grave  halt  over  the  proper 
strapping  of  a  box ;  the  utter  repression  of  any  levity 
on  the  part  of  his  youthful  subordinates;  the  more  than 
Olympian  front  with  which  he  accepts  the  grateful  in- 
cense of  the  common  herd  ;  and  the  swelling  sense  of  im- 
portance of  every  favored  servant  who  is  intrusted  with  a 
duty  about  the  wheeled  throne,  their  official  communica- 
tions with  each  other;  the  distended  dignity  of  every 
groom  and  footman  ;  the  nervous,  expectant  look  of  some 
town  youth  halfway  up  in  society,  who  lingers  by  the 
team  and  boldly  essays  to  stroke  the  near  wheeler,  anx- 
ious to  receive  a  nod,  perhaps,  happy  moment !  a  con- 
descending word  of  recognition, — to  be  seen  talking  with 
the  swell  demigod  of  a  driver  when  he  in  due  time  appears. 

Punctually  at  8.59  the  lord  of  the  coach,  with  his 
buttonhole  flower,  too,  and  irreproachably  dressed, 
walks  out  of  the  open  door  through  an  aisle  of  living 
flesh,  which  opens  deferentially  before  him,  ascends  the 
box,  accepts  the  reins,  and  sits  for  a  moment  like  a 
statue.  The  guard  and  the  proprietary  driver  compare 
gold  watches, — an  awful  instant  of  suspense, — a  last 
moment  of  rapid  comprehensive  inspection  ;  the  guard 
reports  all  ready,  the  horn  rings  out,  and  the  state 
carriage  of.  the  county  rolls  off  as  smoothly  and  noise- 
lessly as  a  perfect  locomotive,  in  the  hands  of  a  perfect 
engineer,  draws  its  train  out  of  a  well-appointed  depot. 

As  a  matter  of  pride  and  point  of  finished  etiquette, 
the  guard,  who  has  been  clambering  all  over  the  stage, 
on  and  off  a  dozen  times,  makes  his  final  report  from 
the  ground,  and  then  leaps  lightly  on  the  wagon  after 
the  wheels  are  in  motion.  His  easy  professional  ascent 
of  the  coach  diagonally  is  the  last  touch  to  the  picture. 

The  arrival  of  the  coach  is  a  still  more  inspiriting 
scene.  In  an  English  village  all  work  has  stopped  at 
four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  perhaps  three,  and  by 


gO  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

nine  P.M.  the  whole  town,  men,  women,  and  children, 
are  thrown  painfully  on  their  own  resources  for  amuse- 
ment or  occupation.  They  are,  therefore,  more  than 
ready  for  the  discharge  of  any  public  duty.  I  have 
repeatedly  seen  the  streets,  both  at  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge, densely  packed  for  squares  awaiting  the  coming 
of  the  coach,  whose  horn  was  to  be  heard  out  of  the 
darkness  at  8.57,  growing  clearer  and  livelier  as  it 
grew  nearer.  And  this  not  on  any  extraordinary  occa- 
sions, not  to  meet  any  prominent  guest,  but  only  to 
welcome  "  the  stage-coach."  We  simply  cannot  under- 
stand the  feeling  with  which  the  Briton  clings  to  an  old 
institution,  and  honors  and  worships  the  man  who  sus- 
tains and  asserts  it. 

A  shout  goes  up  as  the  heads  of  the  impatient  leaders, 
who  snuff  excitement  in  the  air,  touch  the  crowd.  The 
human  walls  form  themselves  again,  the  coach  rolls  into 
the  stand,  and,  with  the  solemn  air  of  a  great  duty  done, 
the  driver  drops  the  reins  into  the  hands  of  the  local 

f^ooms,  who  contest  for  the  honor  of  receiving  them, 
hen  the  cheery  welcomes,  the  questions  as  to  the 
events  of  the  past  two  days  in  which  the  worlds  of  the 
village  and  of  the  coach  have  been  sunuered,  the  orders 
for  dinner,  and  the  form  and  ceremony  of  the  landing. 
The  formal  service  of  the  morning  is  all  repeated  in 
inverse  order,  and,  last  of  all,  the  tired  and  triumphant 
horses  disappear  into  the  night,  led  away  like  heroes, 
amid  thronging  masses  of  attendant  Britons. 

I  have  seen  a  cabal  of  veteran  politicians  decide  on 
the  policy  of  a  momentous  national  campaign.  I  have 
seen  battles  forced  in  a  flash,  and  anxious  generals 
strike  out  a  plan  of  action  in  the  saddle  and  almost 
in  the  moment  of  execution.  I  have  seen^i  council  of 
officers,  with  defeat  around  them  and  their  dead  among 
them,  answer  with  solemn  defiance  a  summons  to  sur- 
render. I  have  seen  half  a  dozen  army  corps  deploy 
their  massed  battalions  in  silence  on  to  afield  of  history 
and  death, — but  I  have  never  seen  anything  half  so 


CAMBRIDGE. 


impressive,  so  utterly  and  overwhelmingly  imposing, 
as  the  arrival  or  departure  of  a  swell  English  coach- 
and-four  in  front  of  an  old-fashioned  English  country 
inn. 

OXFORD,  ENGLAND. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

CAMBRIDGE. 

IN  COLLEGE  CHAMBERS  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY — THE  PURITAN 
COLLEGE  THAT  GAVE  BIRTH  TO  HARVARD — THE  COLLEGE- 
DAY  AT  CAMBRIDGE — THE  SUPPRESSED  UNDERGRADUATE—. 
DINNER  IN  THE  COLLEGE  HALL — A  SURVIVAL  OF  BARONIAL 
TIMES — ENGLISH  COLLEGE  EXPENSES — A  COMMONWEALTH 
or  LETTERS. 

SOME  months  since,  in  Rome,  I  spent  an  afternoon 
in  the  convent  grounds  of  San  Gregoriano,  from  whose 
pleasant  shades  St.  Augustine  carried,  hundreds  of 
years  ago,  the  seeds  of  learning  and  Christianity  to 
savage  England,  leaving  the  refinement,  the  culture, 
the  religious  fellowship  of  civilization  to  bear  the  faith 
to  our  rude  Saxon  forefathers. 

To-day  I  write  from  the  Puritan  cloisters  of  Em- 
manuel College,  Cambridge,  the  historic  walls  from 
whence  the  germs  of  civil  freedom,  and  that  education 
which  alone  can  protect  and  perpetuate  it,  were  borne 
to  our  New  England.  It  was  from  this  Emmanuel 
College — that  Puritan  foundation  established  in  faith 
away  back  in  the  stormy  days  of  the  Commonwealth — 
that  went  forth  the  early  divines  and  educated  laymen 
who,  in  our  colonial  times,  laid  the  firm  foundations 
of  the  civil  and  religious  liberty  we  enjoy  in  this  land, 
in  this  generation.  And  to-day  it  is  grateful  and 


62  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

pleasing  to  know  that,  foremost  among  the  traditions 
of  Emmanuel,  and  cherished  among  her  wealth  of 
pious,  civic,  and  scholarly  associations,  are  the  memories 
of  these  graduates,  the  Harvards  and  Hookers  and 
Wards  and  Bradshaws  of  1600-1650,  and  the  great 
work  they  did,  in  which  the  mother-college  claims  her 
deserved  share.  "  Among  those  chiefest  worthy  of 
honor,"  says  Bacon,  "  are  the  founders  of  states ;"  and 
Emmanuel  hopes  to  have  securely  founded  in  the  New 
World  the  Commonwealth  which  went  to  pieces  so 
disastrously  in  the  Old.  It  is  her  crown.  That  staunch 
and  learned  old  Puritan  statesman,  Sir  Walter  Mild- 
may,  whose  liberality  and  faith  laid  the  foundations  of 
Emmanuel  in  the  darkness  of  uncertainty  and  political 
trouble,  builded  better  than  he  knew. 

The  language  of  the  charter  or  deed  of  foundation 
of  the  college  given  by  this  scholar,  soldier,  and  states- 
man, which  I  regret  I  have  not  at  hand  to  quote  at 
this  moment  of  writing,  is  often  touching,  and  read 
now,  in  the  light  of  history,  is  in  places  dramatically 
prophetic.  He  held  high  office  under  the  government  of 
Queen  Elizabeth,  and  the  fact  of  his  freedom  to  found, 
in  express  words,  an  establishment  for  the  teaching  and 
culture  of  Puritan  principles  is  strong  evidence  of  the 
civil  liberties  of  England  in  that  brilliant  epoch  of  her 
history,  and  of  the  intellectual  breadth  and  liberality 
of  her  political  leaders.  As  the  direct  ancestor  of  Har- 
vard University,  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  Emmanuel 
College  has  always  had  a  special  interest  and  attraction 
for  the  American  scholar,  and  some  of  our  best  New 
England  and  New  York  families  have  sent  their  sons 
to  it  for  their  collegiate  education. 

From  Cambridge  of  England,  however,  the  interest 
of  Emmanuel  College  takes  a  wider  sweep  and  range. 
As  the  academic  fountain  of  Puritanism  she  looks  on 
our  whole  land,  people,  and  history — in  one  sense,  the 
religious  and  political  development  of  Puritanism — is 
her  child  and  descendant. 


CAMBRIDGE.  63 

A  good  friend  in  London,  who  recognized  the  Puri- 
tan in  me,  and  who  was  himself  a  fellow  of  Emmanuel 
in  residence,  was  kind  enough  to  invite  me  to  spend  a 
week  in  Cambridge  in  college  quarters,  placing  at  my 
disposal  a  suite  of  undergraduate  chambers  then  vacant, 
it  being  the  long  vacation. 

The  college  life  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  the  mu- 
nificent development  of  ages  of  faith  and  learning,  is 
something  so  infinitely  deeper,  broader,  richer,  and 
better  than  anything  we  have  in  our  land,  and  withal 
so  different,  that  it  is  difficult  to  know  how  to  describe 
it  or  where  to  begin  the  attempt.  I  do  not  know,  how- 
ever, that  I  can  commence  in  any  better  way  than  by 
attempting  a  picture  of  my  quarters  and  working  out 
from  thence. 

Cambridge  University,  as  I  suppose  every  one  knows, 
is  a  collection  of  independent  colleges,  each  with  its 
own  separate  govern ment,  buildings,  grounds,  history, 
and  associations.  These  colleges  to-day  are  seventeen 
in  number,  and  they  make  up  both  the  university  and 
the  town.  If  you  will  take  seventeen  silver  dollars 
and  half-dollars,  and  throw  them  down  on  a  piece  of 
white  paper  irregularly  but  rather  close  together, 
draw  circles  with  a  pencil  around  each  of  the  coins,  and 
then  connect  these  circular  inclosures  by  convenient 
lines  indicating  streets  and  walks,  you  will  have  a 
pretty  good  idea  of  the  plan  of  Cambridge  town.  It 
is  simply  a  village  which  has  grown  up  and  around  the 
grounds — or  what,  in  Pennsylvania,  is  called  the 
"campus" — of  the  several  colleges. 

What  first  strikes  an  American  stranger  with  some 
.surprise  is  the  comparatively  limited  extent  of  these 
grounds, — the  territorial  plant  of  the  college.  In  our 
imaginations  these  colleges — venerable  in  age  and  tra- 
dition, and  dowered  with  the  associations  of  centuries 
— rise  in  magnificent  proportions,  and  seem  to  stand  in 
princely  domains  in  glebe  and  forest.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  average  college  at  Cambridge  or  Oxford  has 


(54  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

not  a  greater  acreage  in  its  grounds  .than  the  average 
American  college ;  in  fact,  has  not  so  great.  Harvard, 
I  am  sure,  has  larger  grounds  than  most  of  the  English 
colleges.  So  have  Princeton  and  Union,  and,  I  believe, 
Yale.  Pennsylvania  is  already  very  generously  en- 
dowed in  this  respect.  Few  of  the  English  colleges 
have  grounds  equal  in  extent  or  in  artistic  possibilities 
to  those  of  Jefferson  and  Washington  at  Canonsburg,  or 
Franklin  and  Marshall  at  Lancaster,  or  the  Lehigh  at 
Bethlehem,  or  Dickinson  at  Carlisle,  or  Lafayette  at 
Easton,  or  the  institution  at  Mercersburg,  or  even  of 
our  University  of  Pennsylvania,  planted  on  costly  acres 
in  the  built-up  streets  of  a  great  city.  All  these  have 
greater  advantages  in  the  way  of  scenery  and  room  and 
possible  embellishment  and  artistic  enrichment  of  their 
grounds  than  the  average  English  college  of  the  two 
great  universities.  Some  of  the  college-buildings  here 
consist  of  but  a  single  structure,  with  such  grounds 
only  as  are  inclosed  in  the  interior  court. 

On  these  limited  academic  fields,  however,  the  con- 
secrated wealth  of  long  centuries  has  been  lavished, 
under  the  guidance  and  direction  of  the  highest  art  and 
cultivation  of  the  time.  The  grounds  of  some  of  the 
larger  colleges  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  are  often  laid 
out  with  park  and  landscape  effects  such  as  have  hardly 
been  reached  anywhere  in  our  country.  Even  the 
smaller  ones  are  carefully  dressed  and  worked,  so  that 
an  acre  or  two  will  often  set  forth  a  wonderful  study 
of  foliage  or  hue.  And  all  are  crowded  with  grand 
old  tombs,  mouldy,  half-decipherable  legends,  armorial 
bearings,  monuments  of  history,  the  graves  of  martyrs, 
statues,  arches,  solemn  ruins,  memorial  gateways, 
monumental  crosses,  picturesque  cloisters,  and  a  thou- 
sand works  of  art  and  ennobling  associations.  In  the 
successive  architecture  of  many  of  these  noble  edifices 
and  in  the  chain  of  names  and  graves  and  monuments 
you  can  read  the  history  of  England  from  the  twelfth 
century  down. 


CAMBRIDGE.  65 

It  is  this  splendid  endowment  of  tradition,  this  con- 
tinuous legended  memorial  of  the  scholarship  and  piety 
of  ages,  which  is  the  wealth  of  the  English  college.  It 
is  the  contrast  with  this  which  makes  our  own  college 
life,  so  far,  seem  so  poor  and  thin  and  meagre. 

Another  disillusion  is  the  fact  that  the  number  of 
undergraduates  in  these  English  colleges  does  not  differ 
materially  from  the  number  in  ours.  This  runs  from 
sixty  or  seventy  up  through  the  hundreds,  in  some  one 
or  two  cases  touching  a  thousand,  just  as  in  our  de- 
tached American  col  logos.  It  is  the  massing  of  these 
English  colleges  in  one  column  and  bringing  them  all 
under  the  influences  of  one  another  which  gives  them 
their  intellectual  force  in  the  world  of  thought.  The 
seventeen  colleges  of  Cambridge  are  not  educating  any 
more  young  men  than  seventeen  isolated  American 
colleges,  but  they  are  as  an  organized  regular  army  is 
to  a  body  of  loose  militia  regiments. 

Emmanuel  College  holds  about  a  medium  rank  as 
to  the  extent  and  decoration  of  its  grounds.  The 
extensive  front  of  the  great  college-building  is  Greek, 
with  some  adaptation  of  English  style, — this  in  the 
way  of  protest  against  the  ecclesiastical  architecture  of 
most  of  the  other  colleges.  The  central  feature  of  the 
main  edifice  to  an  American  eye  is  the  high  quadrangle 
or  interior  court,  faced  on  two  sides  with  arcades,  and 
bright  with  its  shaven  lawn  of  grass  ever  green  and 
smooth  and  fresh.  The  entrances  to  the  chambers  of 
the  fellows  and  undergraduates  open  on  to  this  court, 
always  known  over  Cambridge  in  college  vernacular  as 
the  "  quad."  Although  this  residence  portion  of  the 
college  is  but  one  building,  it  is  divided  into  sections 
or  grand  compartments,  very  much  like  the  separate 
houses  of  a  city  row,  having  no  communication  with 
one  another,  and  each  section  entered  only  from  its  own 
front  door.  These  sections,  or  houses,  consist  of  about 
six  or  eight  sets  of  chambers,  two  or  three  of  which  are 
*  8* 


66  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

occupied  by  fellows,  the  remainder  by  undergraduates. 
In  older  times  this  was  the  family,  the  fellows  being 
charged  with  some  care  of  the  students.  This  is  not 
the  case  now,  although  the  fellows  always  take  a  kindly 
interest  in  their  undergraduate  neighbors,  feel,  perhaps, 
some  little  historic  responsibility,  invite  the  boys,  at  all 
events  once  or  twice,  to  breakfast  with  them,  and  if 
there  is  any  community  of  tastes  or  feelings  it  results 
in  a  valuable  association  and  acquaintance  for  the 
undergraduate.  He  is  in  the  care  of  an  older  man, 
who  feels  for  him  as  a  brother. 

Now  for  the  life  of  the  undergraduate,  the  only  col- 
lege-life known  in  our  country.  My  quarters,  as  I 
have  said,  were  the  ordinary  suite  of  chambers  of  an 
undergraduate  student,  absent  at  the  time,  and  their 
description  will  appear  rather  sumptuous  to  the  Ameri- 
can graduate  who  recalls  the  two-in-a-small-room  ac- 
commodation of  many  a  good  Pennsylvania  college. 
This  suite  consisted  of  three  good-sized  chambers,  with 
a  small  pantry  or  closet-room.  The  main  chamber,  by 
which  you  enter  your  suite,  is  a  fine  large  room  about 
twenty  feet  square,  looking  out  with  three  windows  on 
the  quadrangle. 

In  this  sitting-  and  reception-room  are  served  your 
breakfast  and  luncheon  by  your  own  servant,  and  at- 
tached to  it  is  the  pantry,  a  capacious  closet  for  the 
storage  of  your  table-linen  and  service,  and  large 
enough  for  your  attendant  to  make  a  little  coffee  or  tea, 
wash  the  dishes,  or  cook  a  slight  breakfast.  Out  of 
this  large  room  open  two  smaller  one*,  ten  by  fourteen 
feet,  a  bed-chamber,  and  a  study  or  private  retiring- 
room. 

Each  section,  or  house  of  six  or  eight  suites,  has  its 
own  separate  servants,  with  their  own  quarters,  to  whose 
services  each  fellow  or  student  has  equal  rights.  This 
staff  consists  generally  of  a  man  and  wife  or  small 
family,  who  can,  between  them,  readily  cook  the  break- 
t'asts,  prepare  the  morning  baths,  brush  the  clothes, 


CAMBRIDGE.  67 

black  boots,  and  run  the  errands  of  the  six  or  eight 
single  gentlemen  who  form  the  family.  Some  of  these 
servants,  as  is  always  the  case  around  a  college,  become 
quite  scholastic  in  appearance  and  demeanor.  In  Cam- 
bridge this  male  attendant  is  known  as  the  "  gyp ;"  in 
Oxford  as  the  "  scout/' 

The  development  of  the  undergraduates'  quarters  to 
the  present  generous  provision  illustrates  somewhat  the 
progress  of  social  life  and  habits  during  the  past 
century  or  two,  and  affords  evidence  of  some  curious 
changes.  In  early  times  undoubtedly  two  or  more 
students  were  quartered  together.  "  Chum"  is  a  con- 
traction of  chambermen.  It  is  likely,  in  remote  times, 
that  six  students  occupied  a  common  sleeping-room 
with  three  or  more  beds  in  it ;  but  even  then  each  one 
of  them,  as  the  ancient  buildings  show,  had  his  sepa- 
rate little  cell,  generally  opening  out  of  the  common 
bed-chamber,  to  which  he  retired  to  read,  study,  or 
"  muse."  From  this  habit  this  little  cell  became  known 
as  the  student's  "  museum."  Here  we  have  the  history 
of  another  word  now  diverted  to  quite  a  different 
special  use.  The  change  in  personal  habit  and  feeling 
made  by  a  few  hundred  years  is  quite  curious.  The 
student  of  Cambridge  to-day  would  willingly  read, 
write,  or  study  in  a  common  chamber  with  another 
man,  but  he  would,  under  no  circumstances,  share  his 
bed-room  with  him. 

My  rooms  look  out  on  either  side  on  prospMcls 
pleasing  to  the  eye,  cultivating  to  the  taste,  and  ele- 
vating in  association  and  suggestion.  On  one  side  they 
command  the  classic  green  quadrangle,  all  shaven  and 
shorn,  with  its  cloistered  arcades,  venerable  gray  tombs, 
monumental  legends,  and  the  admonitory  walls  and 
columns  of  gone  ages.  On  the  other  side  the  study  and 
bed  chamber  sweep  a  small  stretch  of  college  park, 
looking  out  on  gardens  with  ivy  and  roses,  and  a  clear 
little  stream  in  which,  from  your  windows,  you  can  see 
the  fishes  swimming  under  the  crystal  waters,  and  on 


63  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

whose  quiet  bosom  placid  ducks  and  philosophic  swans 
live  in  amity  with  their  finny  friends.  Wide,  roomy 
seats  are  built  into  these  windows,  in  the  pleasant  old 
English  fashion,  and  very  delightful  and  restful  they 
are  when  you  look  out  from  them  on  noble  trees, 
charming  gardens,  and  vistas  of  leafy  boughs  and 
lake  and  meadow.  Compare  this  with  the  red  brick 
walls  and  the  bare  wastes  of  clay,  and,  perhaps,  the 
barren,  neglected  campus,  which  form  the  entourage  of 
a  new  American  school  and  leave  their  painful  photo- 
graph forever  on  the  minds  of  its  children. 

On  the  walls  of  these  rooms  hang  some  good  en- 
gravings and  a  small  painting,  a  mounted  fox  head  and 
brush,  a  worn  horseshoe,  probably  from  the  heels  of 
some  triumphant  racer,  whips,  spurs,  crossed  oars,  some 
hunting  pictures.  It  is  proper  to  add  that  there  are 
also  some  books.  The  suites  of  the  fellows  are  gene- 
rally somewhat  superior  in  accommodation  to  those  of 
the  undergraduates. 

Life  in  one  of  the  colleges  of  an  English  university 
is  something  very  different  from  that  of  an  American 
college.  Intellectually  it  is  something  far  higher  and 
stronger.  The  undergraduate  is  not  the  central  feature, 
as  with  us,  but  only  an  incident.  The  living  college  is 
the  master  and  the  fellows.  The  undergraduates  are 
but  the  younger  members  of  the  academic  family  and 
on  the  threshold  of  the  house, — the  little  children  who 
are  seen  and  not  heard. 

Again,  not  the  least  part  of  the  liberal  endowment 
of  an  English  college  is  the  tradition  of  social  usage 
and  habit  which  it  carries  down,  by  foroe  of  which  any 
student  coming  to  live  within  its  walls  and  sharing  its 
life  receives  the  training  of  a  gentleman,  acquiring  the 
personal  habits  and  manners  which  fit  him  for  associa- 
tion with  the  better  classes  of  society.  In  the  average 
American  college  the  student  leaves  either  a  boor  or  a 
gentleman,  just  as  he  entered.  In  the  English  college, 
however,  the  home  for  hundreds  of  years  of  the  sons 


CAMBRIDGE.  69 

of  gentlemen,  the  habit  of  life  has  become  fixed  and 
traditional,  and  any  boy  going  through  it  comes  out 
with  that  as  a  part  of  his  education. 

The  daily  life  of  the  English  college-resident  is 
simple,  and  differs  from  ours  distinctively  in  the  care 
with  which  it  is  arranged  to  distribute  the  time  for 
work  and  exercise  or  rest,  and  the  ease  with  which  it 
consequently  bears  on  the  individual.  The  English 
student  attains  a  far  higher  grade  of  scholarship  than 
ours,  but  we  never  hear  of  his  breaking  down,  of  shat- 
tered nerves  and  prostrated  brain.  He  takes  more 
time,  it  is  true,  but  saves  his  body  and  his  head. 

The  order  of  the  college  day  is  roughly  this:  Bathe 
in  your  room  at  six  or  seven  o'clock ;  breakfast  served 
in  your  front  chamber  at  seven  or  eight  o'clock  ;  read- 
ing until  one  o'clock  P.M.,  when  there  comes  a  light 
lunch  in  your  room,  generally  only  bread  and  cheese 
and  strong  college  ale. 

Lunch-hour  ends  absolutely  the  day  of  study  or 
work.  At  this  point  the  whole  college — master,  fel- 
lows, and  students — betakes  itself  to  the  open  air,  and 
spends  the  whole  afternoon,  iritil  six  or  seven  o'clock, 
out  of  doors,  walking,  riding,  boating,  fishing,  or  at  ath- 
letic games.  It  is  here  the  college  boy  builds  himself  up 
for  life.  At  seven  o'clock  dinner,  and  from  dinner  to 
bedtime  rest.  This  is  the  common  schedule  of  an  or- 
dinary university  day.  I  have  heard  that  there  are 
"  reading  men"  who  burn  the  midnight  oil  far  into  the 
night,  but  I  write  only  of  what  I  have  seen. 

The  college  dinner  is  an  imposing  and  perhaps  the 
central  feature  of  the  daily  life  of  the  university. 
Here,  in  the  great  hall,  the  whole  college  meets  together 
in  pleasant  union,  and  it  is,  I  believe,  now  the  only 
general  meeting  of  the  day,  compulsory  prayers  being 
abolished  except  on  extraordinary  occasions.  The  hall 
itself — a  survival  of  the  old  baronial  times  of  the  days 
of  the  "  boar's  head  and  rosemary" — is  always  one 
of  the  most  striking  an  hitectural  features  of  the  college 


70  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

building.  It  is  a  fine  and  lofty  room,  with  arched  or 
fretted  or  handsomely-designed  roof,  the  walls  adorned 
with  rich  panelling  and  carvings,  statues,  heraldic  de- 
vices, armorial  shields,  and  old  inscriptions,  and  hung 
with  the  portraits  of  founders  and  benefactors,  kings, 
queens,  statesmen,  and  soldiers.  It  is  generally  oaken, 
with  stone  or  wooden  floors. 

At  one  end  of  the  great  hall,  the  farthest  from  the 
entrance,  on  a  raised  surface,  is  placed  the  table  of  the 
master  and  fellows,  extending  across  the  room ;  on  the 
lower  level  of  the  floor  are  tables  for  the  undergrad- 
uates, running  the  length  of  the  room,  and  placed  at 
right  angles  with  the  master's  table.  All  are  served  at 
the  same  time  and  alike.  When  the  hour  for  dinner 
comes,  the  master  and  fellows,  with  their  guests  if 
there  are  any,  assemble  in  the  combination-room,  another 
fine  chamber,  of  which  anon,  and  move  from  there  into 
the  dining-room,  the  master  leading.  The  same  order 
of  procession  and  seating  of  guests  holds  as  at  any  gen- 
tleman's table.  As  the  procession  from  the  combina- 
tion room  enters  the  main  hall,  the  undergraduates, 
who  are  already  seated,  rise  from  their  benches  and 
stand  as  the  college  passes.  When  the  procession 
reaches  the  head  of  the  table,  one  of  the  students  reads 
or  intones  a  brief  Latin  prayer,  and  all  seat  them- 
selves. At  the  close  of  the  meal  the  same  ceremony 
is  repeated,  the  undergraduates  rising  and  standing  at 
attention  as  the  master  and  fellows  pass  out.  In 
Queen's  College,  Oxford,  I  believe  the  summons  to 
dinner  is  yet  blown  from  a  trumpet  by  a  tabarder, 
but  this  is  exceptional. 

This  college  dinner,  taken  thus  every  day  in  the 
academic  ancestral  hall,  in  the  presence  of  the  effigies 
of  great  men  and  good  women,  the  founders  and  an- 
cestors of  the  house,  in  the  midst  of  historic  associations 
and  venerable  traditions,  is  the  dress-parade  of  univer- 
sity life. 

The  dinner,  I  should  have  said  before,  is  the  ordinary 


CAMBRIDGE.  71 

solid  English  evening  meal  of  four  or  five  courses, — 
a  soup,  a  fish,  roast  meat  and  vegetables,  a  salad  and 
dessert.  Ale  is  served  the  undergraduates  on  allowance, 
I  believe.  On  the  master's  tables  there  are  generally 
wines,  in  some  colleges  on  allowance,  at  others  ordered 
at  cost  prices.  The  Englishman,  however,  generally 
always  drinks  a  huge  flagon  or  tankard  of  ale  with  his 
wines,  sometimes  before  and  sometimes  after.  It  seems 
always  to  be  in  place  to  the  British  stomach.  The  col- 
lege cellars,  I  need  hardly  add,  are  most  excellent:  tra- 
dition does  its  work  kindly  and  gently  even  here,  and 
one  generation  takes  care  of  the  next. 

Dinner  over,  the  undergraduates  are  dismissed  to  their 
roonn,  while  the  master  and  fellows  retire  to  "the  com- 
bination-room," where  over  their  coffee  and  after-dinner 
wines  the  evening  is  spent  in  conversation  and  discourse. 
The  combination-room  is  a  spacious  chamber,  large 
enough  usually  to  accommodate  forty  to  sixty  men,  in 
solid  old-fashioned  arm-chairs,  with  tables,  rests,  screens, 
and  stools.  It  is  also  hung  with  memorial  paintings 
of  benefactors,  masters,  distinguished  "fellows"  who 
have  passed  out  into  the  world  and  become  statesmen, 
cardinals,  generals,  writers,  martyrs,  or  won  fame  in  any 
wav.  Every  old  college  has  its  gallery  of  these  its 
honored  children,  and  they  are  among  its  chiefest  treas- 
ures. The  room  itself  quickly  becomes  a  centre  of  in- 
teresting association  and  academic  tradition.  In  our 
combination-room  at  Emmanuel,  for  instance,  more  than 
one  hundred  years  ago,  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  was  a  fre- 
quent visitor,  and  the  spot  where  he  always  sat,  just  to 
the  left  of  the  warm  chimney-place  as  you  face  it,  is 
pointed  out  as  a  tradition  to-day,  and  the  broad  chairs 
we  sat  in  this  year  were  the  same  used  then.  It  was  in 
the  combination-room  of  Oriel  College,  when  Keble, 
and  Whateley,  and  Newman,  and  Arnold,  and  Pusey 
were  follows,  that  the  celebrated  "  Tractarian"  move- 
ment took  its  start. 

The  fellows  of  a  college  in  residence  at  times  may  be 


72  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

only  eight  or  ten,  when,  of  course,  this  room  is  too 
large,  but  the  little  groups  gather  in  the  gloaming  of 
the  fireplace,  and  the  effect  of  the  shadows  around  them 
advancing  or  retreating  into  the  dark  recesses  of  the 
spacious  walls  is  very  picturesque.  Wax  candles,  I 
may  say  here,  with  their  antique  religious  light,  are  en 
rtyle  in  a  well-regulated  old  combination-room,  gas 
being  too  modern  and  shoddy.  A  solemnly  stately  but- 
ler, with  white  hair  and  portly,  judicial  air,  is  also  an 
indispensable  property. 

Smoking,  I  believe,  is  not  customary  in  the  combina- 
tion-room, the  fellows,  who  retire  at  their  convenience 
during  the  evening,  going  to  their  own  chambers  singly 
or  in  squads  for  a  pipe  or  cigar.  At  eleven  or  twelve 
the  English  university  man  brews  a  pot  of  hot  tea, 
drinks  it,  and  on  this  extraordinary  sleeping-potion  goes 
to  bed.  Here  ends  the  college  day. 

Emmanuel  College  was  founded  to  nourish  and  as- 
sert the  Puritan  principles  inside  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, and  for  a  long  time  it  distinctively  represented  the 
Puritan  idea  in  English  thought  and  history.  Its  very 
name  was  a  battle-cry.  Emmanuel — "  God  with  us" 
— was  the  watchword  and  popular  device  of  the  early 
Puritans.  They  wrote  it  at  the  head  of  their  letters, 
used  it  as  a  common  form  of  salutation  in  their  homes 
and  on  the  streets,  and  later  on  under  Cromwell  shouted 
it  at  the  head  of  regiments  in  the  crucial  hour  of  battle. 
The  chapel  of  this  Puritan  college,  as  a  protest  against  ec- 
clesiastical tendencies  and  superstitious  usages,  was  built 
plain  as  a  Methodist  meeting-house,  pointed  north  and 
south  instead  of  east  and  west,  and  was  never  consecrated. 

Those  stirring  old  times  are  gone,  and  nothing  is  left 
of  them  at  Cambridge,  not  even  the  cold  ashes  of  the 
dead  controversies.  The  ancient  theological  camp  is 
now  the  pleasant  home  of  humaner  letters  and  a  pas- 
sionless science  which  studies  their  remains  as  it  would 
the  nerves  of  a  frog  or  the  traces  of  a  prehistoric  hah- 


CAMBRIDGE.  73 

itation  of  the  globe.  Toleration,  a  spirit  of  judicial 
study,  is  the  claim  and  intellectual  boast  of  the  Cam- 
bridge of  to-day.  It  is  its  pride  now  that  it  never 
burnt  a  bishop  on  either  side  when  the  fires  of  hate 
and  narrowness  were  flaming  over  all  England. 

Speaking  one  evening  at  King's  College  table  of 
Whistler,— 

"  It  may  be  heresy  here,"  I  said,  "  to  admit  to  an 
enjoyment  of  his  paintings." 

"There  are  no  heresies  in  Cambridge,"  promptly 
spoke  up  the  senior  fellow  at  the  table. 

In  looking  over  the  worn  and  somewhat  defective 
records  of  the  early  years  of  Emmanuel  College  one 
sees  very  clearly  the  direct  stream  of  its  influence  on 
the  thought  and  history  of  our  land.  From  its  walls 
came  Thomas  Hooker,  John  Cotton,  Nathaniel  Ward, 
John  Ward,  and  many  of  the  lesser  divines  of  colo- 
nial New  England,  John  Bradshaw,  president  of  the 
court  which  tried  Charles  I.,  and  others  of  the  famous 
regicides,  some  of  whom  sleep  to-day  on  our  shores, 
and  also  a  large  number  of  the  historic  "  Assembly  of 
Divines,"  who,  in  the  palmy  Parliamentary  days  of 
Puritanism,  drafted  the  "  Shorter  Catechism*'  in  West- 
minster Abbey. 

After  much  search  we  found,  on  the  original  rolls, 
the  date  of  the  taking  of  his  degree  of  M.A.  by  John 
Harvard,  the  early  scholar  who  has  given  his  name  to 
the  new  Cambridge  University  of  our  country.  It  was 
in  1628.  This  date,  I  think,  has  never  before  been 
published,  not  being  found  in  the  large  two-volumed 
history  of  Harvard.  The  record  of  graduation  seems 
to  have  been  lost,  but  the  degree  is  taken  in  course. 

Among  the  incidental  library  treasures  of  Emmanuel 
shown  me  was  an  autograph  letter  from  Edward  Everett, 
who  visited  the  college  some  thirty  years  ago,  examined 
with  interest  its  records,  and  on  returning  home  sent  it 
some  volumes  of  New  England  academic  history. 

It  seemed  at  times  rather  odd  to  me  to  recall  the 
D  7 


74  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

memories  of  the  rigid  old  Puritanism  of  self-sacrifice 
;uid  severe  manners  and  personal  austerity — the  cid 
Puritanism  we  know  so  well  in  our  land — here  in  its 
modern  home.  The  old  Greek  walls,  with  their  once 
hard  Protestant  lines,  are  toned  and  softened  and 
mellowed  by  time.  The  rigid  distinctive  intellectual 
principles  of  ancient  struggles  are  lost  in  the  broader 
culture  and  wider  range  of  modern  thought.  The 
Puritan  college  of  Cambridge  to-day  does  not  differ 
materially  from  the  High  Church  college  or  the  Broad 
Church  college  of  the  same  university.  The  old 
names  are  there  held  in  affectionate  memory,  like 
family  portraits,  but  that  is  all.  I  hardly  think  the 
gaunt  old  Puritan  of  the  seventeenth  century  would 
recognize  his  Emmanuel  boy  at  Cambridge  to-day.  I 
much  fear  the  undergraduate  has  a  carnal  knowledge 
of  playing  cards  and  running  horses  and  boat-racing 
and  strange  wines  and  ungodly  games,  and  I  do  not 
think  the  corporate  fellows  would  object  to  having 
their  college  and  now-consecrated  chapel  all  covered 
over  with  Madonnas  and  saints  and  crucifixes,  if  only  it 
were  done  in  good  taste  and  in  the  highest  glory  of  mar- 
ble and  stained  glass,  and  mosaic  and  oaken  carving. 

But  these  Puritan  descendants  have  not  forgotten 
their  fathers.  They  may  not  lead  their  austere  lives 
to-day  any  more  than  they  should  wear  their  quaint 
clothes,  nor  would  it  do  any  more  good.  But  they 
give  to  all  the  freedom  for  which  the  Puritan  fought, 
and  thus  afford  the  sweetest  incense  to  his  memory, 
and  in  the  daily  college  life  keep  green  the  names  of 
the  founders  and  leaders.  They  venerate  the  ancestral 
manes ;  they  honor  their  parents  in  the  goodly  land 
which  the  Lord  has  given  them  ;  and  every  evening  the 
gathering  in  the  combination-room  is  a  reverent  func- 
tion in  piam  memoriam.  The  libation  is  generally 
claret,  sometimes  port. 

I  was  interested  in  finding  how  moderate  are  the 


CAMBRIDGE.  75 

expenses  of  the  undergraduates  at  Cambridge  in  com- 
parison with  the  generous  provision  for  his  living  and 
tuition.  An  allowance  of  seven  hundred  and  fifty 
to  one  thousand  dollars  a  year  will  sustain  a  boy 
creditably.  This  sum  will  not  only  cover  necessary 
expenditures,  but  enable  him  to  bear  his  fair  share  in 
the  college  amusements,  boating,  cricket,  etc.,  and  mix 
on  equal  terms  with  his  associates.  My  friends  thought 
one  thousand  dollars  a  rather  generous  estimate,  which 
should  also  cover  the  travelling  expenses  of  the  year  to 
and  from  Cambridge  from  a  home  in  England.  For 
this  sum  the  student  not  only  gets  the  thorough  train- 
ing of  a  strong  college,  but  lives  in  the  strengthening 
atmosphere  of  seventeen  colleges,  with  all  their  splendid 
inheritance  of  centuries  of  tradition  and  association. 

In  outward  organization  the  university  is  a  union  of 
independent  colleges  forming  a  literary  commonwealth. 
These  colleges  hold  to  the  central  government  much  the 
relation  of  our  States  to  the  national  government  at 
Washington.  Indeed,  following  out  the  line  of  this 
comparison,  the  university  might  aptly  be  called  the 
United  Colleges  of  Cambridge.  This  phrase  will, 
perhaps,  best  convey  to  the  American  mind  the  outline 
of  its  constitution.  Each  college  manages  its  own  in- 
tornal  affairs,  regulates  its  own  admissions,  establishes 
its  own  cursuSj  governs  its  own  students,  administers 
its  own  endowment,  and  elects  its  own  master.  The 
university  organization  masses  the  forces  of  the  whole 
of  them  as  against  the  outside  world.  It  confers  de- 
grees, elects  members  to  Parliament,  and  generally 
deals  with  the  outward  or  "  foreign  affairs"  of  the 
academic  commonwealth. 

Under  recent  acts  of  Parliament  very  considerable 
changes  are  being  made  in  the  constitution  of  the  uni- 
versities and  the  administration  of  the  colleges,  but 
they  are  too  wide  and  complex  to  take  up  in  the  limits 
of  this  paper.  The  general  movement  I  may  say 


76  ENGLISH  TOWNS. 

however,  is  towards  centralization, — the  strengthening 
the  University  at  the  expense  of  the  several  individual 
colleges. 

In  fact,  I  must  stop  here,  noting  only  in  closing  one 
mediaeval  touch  of  local  color.  Every  night  here,  pre- 
cisely at  nine  o'clock,  the  curfew-bell  sounds.  It  tolls 
just  the  same  strokes  as  in  the  troubled  times  of  the 
Norman  conquest,  carrying  us  back  hundreds  of  years, 
but  it  cannot  carry  us  off  to  bed  any  more. 

CAMBRIDGE,  ENGLAND. 


ENGLISH    POLITICS. 


77 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


ENGLISH    POLITICAL   LIFE. 

A  TRANSITION  or  SOVEREIGN  POWER  IN  PROGRESS — THE  ENG- 
LISHMAN'S DEVELOPMENT  FROM  THE  "SUBJECT"  INTO  THE 
"  CITIZEN" — GOVERNMENT  OK  THE  GREAT  FAMILIES — THE 
ARISTOCRATIC  ORDER — LAND  ITS  BASIS — THE  BLOW  TO 
ENGLISH  SOCIETY  THAT  COMES  FROM  OUR  PRAIRIES — THE 
ENGLISH  CASTLE  AND  THE  KANSAS  WHEAT-FIELD— A 
BLOODLESS  AND  SILENT  REVOLUTION — THE  RUNNYMEDE 
OF  1880. 

ENGLISH  politics  are  an  extremely  interesting  study 
at  this  moment,  because  they  are  in  a  transition  state, 
and  the  old  forces  and  the  new  define  themselves  more 
clearly  than  when  the  country  is  in  repose  and  standing 
still.  The  government  is  passing  from  the  hands  of 
an  aristocracy  into  the  hands  of  the  people,  and  this 
by  reason  of  a  change  in  the  social  structure  of  Eng- 
land itself.  The  old  England  whose  corner-stone  is 
class  and  privilege  is  dissolving  in  the  new  political 
acids  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  stratification  of 
society — many  classes  and  orders  of  the  people,  and 
these  classes  resting  one  upon  another — is  giving  way 
to  a  new  order  of  things,  where,  as  nearly  as  possible, 
society  becomes  homogeneous,  rank  is  done  away  with, 
and  all  classes  are  fused  into  one  mass. 

For  many  centuries  England  has  been  governed  by 
its  great  families.  The  castle  was  the  germ  of  political 
power,  as  the  township  is  with  us.  The  people  were 
not  sharers  in  the  management  of  the  nation,  but 
"subjects,"  nominally  of  the  crown,  really  of  that 
order — or,  in  American  parlance,  "ring" — of  great 
families  who  made  and  unmade  kings  and  queens. 

i  y 


80  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

Now  the  Englishman  is  developing  from  the  "  sub- 
ject" into  the  "  citizen."  This  is  the  silent  revolution, 
social  and  political,  which  is  in  progress  to-day  in  Eng- 
land. It  is  noiseless,  bloodless,  after  the  fortunate 
fashion  of  the  land,  and  moves  ever  without  violence, 
but  it  is  none  the  less  radical  and  thorough. 

No  one  can  look  on  the  landed  aristocracy  of  Great 
Britain  without  a  sense  of  profound  admiration  for  the 
power  and  self-control  which  have  constructed  and 
sustained  the  order.  For  many  centuries  it  has 
governed  England  absolutely,  controlling  to  its  own 
use  and  behoof  the  power  of  the  crown,  the  Church, 
the  army,  the  schools,  and  subordinating  to  itself  and 
its  own  uses  trade  and  commerce  and  wealth.  There 
has  been  a  breadth  and  intelligence  and  self-restraint 
necessary  to  achieve  and  keep  all  this  which  challenges 
respect  and  admiration.  These  great  families  acquired 
and  held  all  the  land  of  the  country,  and  so  held  a 
nation  as  tenants.  When  votes  became  the  coin  of 
government,  they  kept  all  the  votes  to  themselves. 
Withal  there  was  a  certain  conscientiousness  in  all  this 
princely  plunder.  They  did  not  defend  it  as  a  lordly 
robbery.  They  wished  to  show  a  better  title  than 
the  sword  for  this  high  estate,  and  so  they  held  it  all 
in  trust  for  the  nation.  The  ballot  was  a  trust  in  the 
hands  of  the  few  to  be  exercised  for  the  benefit  and 
good  of  the  many.  This  was  Burke's  famous  theory, 
brilliantly  elaborated  in  his  brilliant  style,  and  doubt- 
less he  believed  it.  And  if  you  ask  an  English  lord 
of  to-day,  he  will  tell  you  that  he  holds  his  magnificent 
estates, — hundreds  of  broad  farms,  villages,  towns, 
counties, — not  as  a  selfish  personal  possession,  but  in 
trust  for  all  the  people.  Nevertheless,  in  both  of  these 
instances  it  is  clearly  a  case  where  the  trusteeship  is 
more  desirable  than  the  usufruct. 

The  people  have  gotten  the  votes  to  themselves,  and 
now  they  are  getting  the  land.  This  is  the  revolution. 

Without  question,  the  large  English  holder  by  descent 


ENGLISH  POLITICAL  LIFE.  gj 

does  feel  a  responsibility  over,  which  the  American 
landowner  by  purchase  never  experiences.  His  fathers 
did  acquire  their  land  as  a  trust,  to  defend  the  kingdom. 
The  trust  has  passed  now  into  a  different  shape,  and 
those  who  are  conscientious  recognize  it.  The  defect  of 
the  theory  is  that  those  who  are  not  conscientious  or  intel- 
ligent do  not  recognize  it,  and  there  is  no  way  of  making 
them.  The  suffering  usufructuaries  have  no  remedy. 
The  submergence  of  the  English  aristocracy -in  the  waves 
of  the  people  is  a  sight  which  even  the  American  re- 
publican views  not  without  a  certain  sadness.  The 
ultimate  gain  to  the  whole  people  is  large.  The 
immediate  loss  .to  the  world  is  definite  and  sharp.  As  a 
class  the  aristocracy  of  England  is  probably  the  best 
and  highest  that  has  ever  been.  It  has  IK-CD  more  con- 
scientious, more  dignified,  of  a  higher  nmral  and  in- 
tellectual grade,  than  the  nobility  of  any  other  country. 
To  its  blood  and  birth  it  has  added  education  and 
wealth,  consecrating  them  to  its  high  social  and  politi- 
cal uses.  Thus  it  has  become  educated  without  pedan- 
try, and  wealthy  without  vulgarity.  It  is  this  trinity 
of  hereditary  power  and  education  and  wealth  which 
has  made  it  strong  and  permanent. 

As  a  consequence  of  all  this  it  has  evolved  a  very 
high  type  of  man  and  woman, — a  flower  for  the  enjoy- 
ment of  all  the  world.  In  physical  health,  in  personal 
cultivation,  in  gentle  manners,  in  a  delicate  sense  of 
honor,  in  the  perfection  of  his  mode  and  order  of  life  at 
home,  the  English  gentleman  of  our  day  stands  without 
a  rival.  Other  classes  of  other  countries  may  approach 
or  equal  him  in  some  one  of  these  points,  but  in  the  com- 
bination of  them  all  there  is  none  that  comes  near  him. 

Now,  the  lower-class  Englishman,  in  whom,  by  the 
force  of  numbers,  he  will  be  lost,  is  not  a  pleasing  or 
desirable  order  of  man.  When  the  English  aristoc- 
racy goes  down  it  is  not  merely  the  dissolving  of  a 
venerable  historical  picture,  like  a  ruined  abbey  or  a 
fallen  castle.  It  is  a  positive  loss.  Thoughtful  Eng- 


82  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

lishmen  to-day  will  tell  you  that  the  imminent  clanger 
to  English  society  is  the  coming  up  of  large  masses  of 
uneducated  wealth,  which,  presumptuous  and  vulgar  just 
in  proportion  to  its  ignorance,  deteriorates  and  lowers 
the  tone  of  opinion  and  thus  degenerates  the  fibre  of  the 
whole  social  structure.  This  is  so  in  every  country,  but 
is  especially  so  in  England,  for  the  lower-class  English- 
man is  a  peculiarly  ungracious  and  disagreeable  kind  of 
being.  The  safety  of  England  and  the  hope  of  good 
for  all  her  classes  lie  in  the  fact  that  this  change  has 
been  going  on  very  slowly. 

Just  at  present,  however,  there  are  many  indications 
that  a  crisis  is  threatening  that  may  hasten  the  course 
of  English  history  beyond  its  average  slow  movement, 
Curiously  enough,  the  impulse  comes  directly  from  our 
side  of  the  ocean. 

Land  is  the  basis  of  the  English  aristocracy.  Its 
rentals  have  been  their  revenue,  and  all  of  it,  for  a  peer 
could  not  go  into  trade.  The  rental  of  land  depends 
ultimately  on  its  bread-yielding  power, — the  value  of 
the  wheat  it  will  raise.  But  land,  having  become  the 
corner-stone  of  social  position  and  power  of  all  kinds, 
has  come  to  have  a  fictitious  value  in  England  far  be- 
yond its  wheat-raising  value.  The  new-made  millionaire 
in  England  is  nothing  until  he  owns  a  large  country 
estate.  This,  and  this  alone,  will  give  him  any  position 
in  the  county  and  open,  grudgingly  and  sparingly 
enough  it  is  true,  the  doors  of  society.  Consequently, 
the  new  manufacturer  and  tradesman  buy  it  at  any  price. 
Thus  it  has  come  to  pass  that  in  recent  years,  while  the 
rents  or  income  of  land  have  been  coming  down,  the 
price  of  land  has  been  going  up.  The  new  men  want 
it  without  reference  to  its  legitimate  value. 

With  the  rise  of  commercial  fortunes  values  have  been 
going  up  all  over  England,  as  over  the  world.  It  costs 
more  to  live,  and  the  landed  classes,  even  if  getting  the 
rents  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  are  relatively  poorer.  But 


ENGLISH  POLITICAL   LIFE.  g^ 

they  do  not  get  the  old  rents,  for  the  value  of  wheat  is 
going  down  all  the  time;  and  the  value  of  wheat  is  the 
measure  of  the  rent  which  the  tenant-farmer  can  pay.  It 
is  the  farmer  whose  profits  support  the  landed  aristoc- 
racy. The  castle  rests  on  the  farm.  Now,  it  is  the  tre- 
mendous importation,  at  ever  cheaper  rates,  of  our 
American  wheat  into  England  which  is  steadily  lower- 
ing the  market  price  of  English  wheat  and  the  rental 
of  English  farms.  Thus  comes  a  dramatic  situation. 
The  Kansas  fanner,  the  men  of  Minnesota,  Nebraska 
and  Dakota,  all-innocent  of  their  work,  are  sapping 
away  the  foundations  of  the  aristocracy  of  England. 
Every  swath  in  a  Western  wheat-field  topples  a  stone 
from  an  English  castle. 

The  social  and  political  fate  of  the  strongest  and 
ablest  aristocracy  of  Europe  is  being  worked  out  to-day 
on  a  foreign  continent  and  by  emigrants  from  Europe, 
— the  stones  which  the  builders  rejected  there.  It  is 
Nemesis. 

This  is  the  situation,  and  every  year  it  is  getting 
worse  and  worse,  for  every  year  the  price  of  land  will 
represent  less  and  less  its  bread-yielding  power  and 
more  and  more  its  social  power,  and  with  the  perfection 
of  transportation  and  the  opening  of  wider  areas  to  cul- 
tivation American  wheat  will  be  laid  cheaper  and 
cheaper  at  English  doors.  Then,  again,  another  pres- 
sure hastens  the  crash.  Growing  slowly  poorer,  the 
landed  nobility  have  been  for  a  generation  or  two  doing 
what  most  other  people  do  in  like  situation, — borrowing 
and  mortgaging  their  land.  To-day  the  landed  estates 
of  England,  as  a  whole,  are  heavily  encumbered,  many 
of  them  up  to  their  full  value.  As  the  power  to  pay 
off  debt  is  steadily  decreasing,  this  effort  for  relief  only 
speeds  the  final  disaster.  One  of  the  imminent  questions 
which  confronts  most  gravely  the  new  Parliament  is 
some  plan  for  the  relief  by  law  of  the  landed  estates  of 
Great  Britain  burdened  by  the  debts  and  charges  of 
generations. 


84  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

However  radical  the  social  and  political  changes  in 
progress  in  England,  there  will  not  likely  be  any 
change  in  the  form  of  government  in  onr  time :  Eng- 
land loves  a  form  too  well.  The  great  families  admin- 
istered their  aristocratic  government  under  the  form  of 
a  monarchy.  The  people  likely  will  administer  a  re- 
publican government  under  the  same  monarchical  form. 
England  to-day  is  as  republican  as  we  are  in  many 
things,  but  the  old  forms  remain  unchanged, — venerable 
and  picturesque,  but  lifeless. 

This  is  the  revolution  which  is  going  on  to-day  in 
the  England  of  our  sight,  and  it  is  as  great  and  impor- 
tant as  any  in  her  history,  as  sharp  in  its  lines,  as  far- 
reaching  in  its  consequences.  Conventional  travellers 
seek  out  the  plains  of  Runnymede  to  sentimentalize  or 
indulge  in  patriotic  platitudes,  but  there  is  a  current 
flowing  through  Westminster  to-day,  and  at  every 
election-poll  in  England,  with  a  stream  clearer  and 
swifter  and  more  fateful  than  ever  ran  the  historic 
water-brooks  of  Surrey. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

GLADSTONE. 

THE  ENGLISH  STATESMAN  IN  HIS  LONDON  HOME — A  PEN- 
PORTRAIT  OF  THE  MAN — THE  SCHOLAR  IN  EUROPEAN  POLI- 
TICS— MR.  GLADSTONE  ON  AMERICAN  GOVERNMENT  ADMIN- 
ISTRATION— THE  PAYMENT  OF  OUR  NATIONAL  DEBT — His 
FUNDAMENTAL  REPUBLICANISM — FREE  TRADE. 

I  FOUND  Mr.  Gladstone,  the  scholar-statesman  of 
England,  among  books,  letters  and  MSS.,  and  volumes 
laid  in  successive  strata  on  his  table.  The  last  number 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century  served  as  a  paper-weight, 
holding  down  a  mass  of  official  parchments.  A  file 


GLADSTONE.  85 

of  Greek  newspapers  peeped  out  from  the  covert  of  a 
pigeon-hole, — Cyprus  was  then  the  b&e  noir  of  English 
polities, — looking  like  erudite  mummies  among  the 
strapped  and  indorsed  bundles  of  parliamentary  briefs 
and  "  orders  for  the  day."  The  "  Homeric  studies"  of 
the  Oxford  "double-first"  scholar  were  coming  into  the 
most  practical  kind  of  play  as  a  political  force.  Dis- 
raeli himself  could  not  have  asked  a  more  dramatic 
situation. 

Mr.  Gladstone's  London  dwelling  is  a  plain,  spacious 
house,  one  of  a  substantial  "row,"  with  the  ordinary 
architectureless  front  of  a  close-built  city  street.  It 
stands  on  Harley  Street,  in  one  of  the  most  solid  and 
respectable  quarters  of  London.  Inside  there  is  only 
the  usual  provision  of  the  average  well-off  citizen, — a 
great  deal  of  comfort,  but  no  display.  He  avoids  the 
palace-atmosphere  in  his  own  home,  just  as  he  eschews 
the  glamour  of  imperial  ideas  in  politics.  Simplicity 
is,  indeed,  one  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  ruling  characteristics. 
The  visiting-card  of  the  ex-premier  of  England  reads 
simply  "Mr.  W.  E.  Gladstone." 

This  is,  indeed,  all  the  rank  he  is  entitled  to  under 
the  social  laws  of  England,  which  are  held  more  binding1 
and  sacred  throughout  the  land  than  the  acts  of  Par- 
liament. It  is  one  of  the  triumphs  of  the  English 
social  organization,  which  it  has  taken  centuries  to 
perfect,  that  at  a  London  dinner-party  Mr.  Gladstone 
(out  of  office)  would  have  to  yield  precedence  to  any 
hobbledehoy  of  a  school -boy  whose  father  chanced  to  be 
an  earl. 

In  this  modest  house  the  work-room  of  the  veteran 
statesman  is  a  moderate-sized  chamber  on  the  second 
story,  lined  with  books  and  very  solidly  furnished 
with  heavy  table,  large,  comfortable  leathern  chairs, 
and  a  few  fine  engravings,  some  of  political,  some  of 
art  interest,  the  day's  papers  on  the  floor.  A  vase  of 
fresh  flowers,  full  of  color  and  bloom,  smiled  through 
the  sombre  smoke  and  muddy  fog  of  London. 

8 


86  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

In  personal  appearance  Mr.  Gladstone  is  an  active, 
lithe,  muscular  man,  rather  tall,  and  of  well-propor- 
tioned frame.  His  face  and  figure  have  that  clear-cut 
contour  which  generally  indicates  several  generations 
of  intellectual  activity  and  personal  leadership.  Mr. 
Gladstone  is  the  descendant  of  a  long  line  of  Scottish 
lairdmen  of  small  wealth  and  limited  possessions,  but 
accustomed  to  stand  first  in  their  community,  to  think, 
and  to  lead.  The  face  is  scholarly,  cultivated,  its  out- 
lines boldly  defined  by  that  meagreness  of  muscle  which 
distinguishes  the  intellectual  athlete.  There  is  not  an 
ounce  of  superfluous  flesh  on  it.  The  thin  lips  and  well- 
cut  mouth  and  chin  betoken  firmness,  determination, 
and  endurance.  Seventy  summers  have  sat  lightly  on 
Mr.  Gladstone,  but  the  years  have  brought  their  bless- 
ing of  rest,  and  his  face  in  general  wears  the  repose  of 
strength  and  experience,  strongly  lined  with  the  record 
of  struggle  and  thought.  A  new  fact,  however,  or  an 
aggressive  opinion  wakes  the  whole  man  with  the  fire 
of  youth,  and  the  eye  flashes  with  eager  light,  and  the 
body  bends  quickly  forward,  as  if  to  grasp  a  fresh  ac- 
quisition. 

Like  all  strong  Englishmen,  Mr.  Gladstone  is  a  man 
of  large  physical  power  and  endurance,  fond  of  out- 
door air  and  work,  and  the  ring  of  his  axe  at  Hawar- 
den,  so  familiar  to  England,  has  echoed  even  across  the 
Atlantic. 

An  Eton  boy  and  a  Christ  Church  graduate,  I 
found  at  Oxford  that  the  great  university  had  already 
in  living  memory  enrolled  Mr.  Gladstone  among  her 
jewels  of  state,  with  Wolsey  and  Pole  and  Laud  and 
Hampden  and  Vane  and  Clarendon  and  Sir  Thomas 
More  and  Marlborough  and  Pitt,  and  the  long  list  of 
her  sons  who  have  led  in  field  and  council,  consecrating 
their  trained  powers  to  the  service  of  their  country. 
If  Mr.  Gladstone  owes' to  his  university  the  intellectual 
training  and  discipline  which  have  enabled  him  to  stand 
foremost  am^ng  the  political  leaders  of  his  time,  he  has 


GLADSTONE.  87 

amply  repaid  the  debt  in  the  conscientious  devotion 
with  which  he  has  served  at  the  altars  of  learning  dur- 
ing a  busy  and  eventful  life,  and  a  long  one,  for  the 
premier's  political  career  began  within  one  year  from 
his  college  graduation,  when  he  was  elected  to  the  House 
of  Commons  as  a  Conservative.  Within  two  years  from 
that  time  he  was  in  the  ministry  as  an  under-secretary. 

Notwithstanding  the  strain  of  a  continuous  political 
career  in  a  country  whose  political  service  is,  perhaps, 
the  most  exacting  in  the  world  at  this  time, — its  interests 
encircling  the  globe, — Mr.  Gladstone  has  been  a  most 
prolific  writer,  his  range  of  study  and  discussion  run- 
ning pretty  much  over  all  the  fields  of  modern  thought. 
His  greater  works,  "  Homer  and  the  Homeric  Age," 
"Juventus  Mundi,"  "Ecce  Homo,"  "Vatican  De- 
crees," are,  perhaps,  as  well  known  to  the  educated 
classes  of  our  own  country  as  to  those  of  England. 
They  do  not  begin,  however,  to  represent  the  immense 
bulk  and  varied  range  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  literary 
labors.  These  are  best  seen  in  the  wonderful  wealth 
of  his  magazine  articles,  which  have  flowed  in  a  steady 
stream  for  a  generation  now  through  the  periodical 
press  of  England.  An  edited  collection  just  made  by 
one  of  the  London  publishers  forms  quite  a  respectable 
library  in  itself.  In  fact,  Mr.  Gladstone's  contributions 
to  the  magazine  literature  of  the  day  have  been  more 
voluminous  than  those  of  many  a  professional  writer. 

In  outlining  Mr.  Gladstone's  literary  rank  and  work 
one  cannot  help  noting  the  absence  of  any  high  schol- 
arship in  American  politics  as  contrasted  with  its 
marked  presence  in  European  statesmanship.  Edu- 
cation, of  course,  is  a  prerequisite  for  the  European 
politician,  but,  further,  a  respectable  degree  of  scholar- 
ship may  even  be  said  to  be  demanded.  Personal  cul- 
tivation, I  may  add,  is  a  further  incidental  qualification 
growing  out  of  the  social  structure  of  the  Old  World. 

A  glance  at  the  English  political  leaders  of  the  day 
shows  how  thoroughly  scholarship  has  entered  into 


88  ENGLISH   POLITICS. 

their  lives.  Disraeli,  ex-premier,  is  a  distinguished 
novelist.  Of  Gladstone,  premier  of  to-day,  author, 
essayist,  magazinist,  I  have  just  spoken,  and  I  might 
have  noted  his  breathing  Latin  renderings  of  standard 
hymns  which  have  gone  into  classic  literature.  The  late 
Earl  of  Derby,  another  premier,  is  known  the  learned 
world  over  f%or  his  translation  of  the  Iliad.  Lord 
Brougham  was  almost  the  first  scholar  of  his  day. 
The  Earl  of  Caernarvon,  a  distinguished  reviewer,  has 
just  published  a  translation  of  the  Agamemnon  of 
JEschylus.  The  Duke  of  Argyll  has  published  elabo- 
rate works  on  politico-theological  themes. 

Coming  down  a  little  farther,  Lord  Hough  ton  finds 
leisure  from  his  duties  in  the  House  of  Peers  to  con- 
tribute a  volume  of  poems,  while  such  active  political 
workers  as  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  Mr.  Edward  Jenkins, 
Sir  George  Campbell,  Henry  Vivian,  M.P.,  Lord 
Lytton,  Sir  Bartle  Frere,  Lord  Dufferin,  Sir  Henry 
Rawlinson,  and  others,  have  all  published  popular 
books  of  more  or  less  literary  ability.  Sir  Garnet 
Wolseley  is  an  accomplished  military  writer,  author  of 
an  admirable  "Soldiers'  and  Officers'  Hand-Book." 
Henry  Fawcett,  M.P.,  is  professor  of  political  economy 
at  Cambridge  as  well  as  a  distinguished  writer. 

Coming  to  France,  it  is  no  less  striking.  Thiers  has 
given  to  the  world  a  piZce  de  resistance  in  twenty  vol- 
umes. Victor  Hugo,  Girardin,  Lamartine,  Laboulaye, 
Montalembert,  Jules  Simon,  Guizot,  are  names  familiar 
and  distinguished  equally  in  politics  and  in  literature. 
The  Comte  de  Paris  has  produced  the  most  elaborate 
and  the  best  history  of  our  civil  war  yet  written,  and 
perhaps  the  best  of  all  the  books  called  out  by  our 
great  struggle.  Olivier  has  a  new  work  just  announced, 
and  Jules  Favre  one  just  out.  Even  Louis  Napoleon 
felt  it  desirable  to  assume  a  virtue  if  he  had  it  not, 
and  issued  an  imperial  "Life  of  Caesar." 
-  In  Italy,  Menghetti,  prime  minister  of  the  outgoing 
Cabinet,  is  known  for  his  large  work  on  "  Church  and 


GLADSTONE.  89 

State/' and  Pantaleone,  senator  and  soldier,  lias  brought 
out  an  elaborate  volume  "Against  Infallibility." 

In  Germany — the  greatest  national  force  of  the  day 
— every  Cabinet  has  some  of  its  chairs  filled  by  doctors 
of  philosophy,  and  even  the  generals  are  trained  schol- 
ars. In  fact,  in  this  country,  where  the  entire  mass  of 
the  nation  has  almost  a  finished  education,  the  political 
leaders  must  be  men  of  trained  intellectual  power. 

Compare  all  this  with  our  own  poverty.  General 
John  A.  Dix  won  some  possibly  permanent  literary 
distinction  by  a  scholarly  translation  of  the  "Dies 
Ira3."  Charles  Sumner  was  a  vigorous  and  polished 
writer.  The  present  Secretary  of  the  Navy  has  entered 
the  field  of  polemics.  There  are  some  New  England 
names  in  politics  entitled  to  be  mentioned  respectfully 
in  the  world  of  letters ;  but  how  brief  the  list,  and  how 
meagre  for  the  whole  country !  The  American  legislator's 
education  is  pretty  much  confined  to  votes  and  voting, 
just  that  particular  field  of  knowledge  which  English 
public  opinion  prohibits  its  legislator  from  entering, 
forcing  him  to  relegate  all  this  kind  of  work  to  "  the 
agent," — a  special  political  institution  over  here, — as 
incompatible  with  the  standing  and  character  of  a  law- 
giver. Like  the  "w"hip,"  the  "agent"  is  a  distinctive 
feature  in  English  practical  politics  to  which  we  have  no 
direct  equivalent.  I  shall  describe  them  both  farther  on. 

In  the  course  of  conversation  Mr.  Gladstone  grew 
quite  eloquent  in  praise  of  the  work  of  the  successive 
administrations  of  our  government  since  the  war,  warm- 
ing almost  into  enthusiasm  as  he  recounted  their  achieve- 
ments in  reducing  the  public  debt,  and  asking  practical 
questions  as  to  the  internal  direction  of  this  uniform 
policy  through  so  many  administrations,  and  as  to  its 
popular  political  effects  on  the  country  at  large.  The 
well-considered,  almost  scientific  character  of  these  in- 
quiries showed  how  thoroughly  Mr.  Gladstone  has 
studied  and  how  closely  he  has  followed  our  course  in 
this  matter.  Indeed,  he  has  made  great  practical 

8* 


90  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

political  use  of  it,  from  session  to  session,  for  some 
years,  in  fighting  the  Conservative  party. 

It  was  the  ambition  of  Mr.  Gladstone  as  leader  of 
the  Ministry  of  1868-74  to  follow  in  a  modest  way  our 
lead  in  this  direction,  and  he  did  grapple  directly  with 
the  national  debt  of  England, — monster  as  it  is, — and 
initiated  a  very  promising  movement  towards  its  dimi- 
nution. Since  his  outgoing  the  movement  has  not  been 
carried  on,  but  I  have  no  doubt  the  attempt  will  be  re- 
newed under  his  present  administration. 

In  truth,  in  a  general  way  Mr.  Gladstone  is  rather 
extravagantly  laudatory  of  our  country,  standing  up 
stoutly  to  all  the  assertions  in  his  recent  famous  "  Next 
of  Kin"  article,  so  complacently  received  on  our  side 
of  the  water,  so  severely  criticised  on  this.  I  told  him 
frankly  I  thought  he  had  done  us  some  substantial  harm 
by  this  brilliant  paper,  as  our  national  sense  of  self- 
sufficiency  is  not,  as  a  rule,  in  need  of  stimulant,  but 
he  avers  that  we  were  entitled  to  all  he  said. 

Mr.  Gladstone  has  unquestionably  made  a  close  study 
of  our  public  men  and  measures  of  late  years,  and  takes 
heart  for  England  from  our  achievements,  believing 
that  the  two  great  popular  governments  of  the  English- 
speaking  peoples  of  the  world  must  move  in  the  same 
direction,  and  that  what  one  can  achieve  the  other  can 
do.  He  has  a  familiar  knowledge  of  the  interior  work- 
ing of  our  political  system,  and  of  the  work  and  char- 
acter of  our  really  prominent  men, — the  men  whose 
speeches  have  shown  thought  enough  to  catch  the  ear 
of  foreign  statesmen. 

Mr.  Gladstone  avers  that  our  national  integrity  in 
the  payment  of  our  public  debt — the  efforts  both  of  the 
people  and  of  administrations  made  to  this  end — is 
something  unprecedented  in  political  history.  To  this 
point  he  returned  again  and  again  with  unflagging  in- 
terest, inquiring  whether  the  nation  never  grew  restive 
under  the  continued  pressure  of  taxation, — whether  it 
was  made  a  leading  issue  in  the  campaign  before  the 


GLADSTONE.  91 

people, — and  expressing  his  renewed  admiration  for  the 
courage  and  integrity  of  the  leaders  who  carried  it 
through,  and  of  the  people  who  are  capable  of  such 
things. 

Mr.  Gladstone,  whom  I  met  in  the  fall  of  1879, 
when  he  was  out  of  office,  was  kind  enough  to  go  at 
some  length  into  the  party  situation  of  the  hour,  re- 
vealing his  mental  and  political  cast  in  this  unstudied 
conversation,  following  its  own  drift,  far  better  than  in 
an  elaborate  speech  or  article.  He  has  all  the  essential 
fibre  of  republicanism.  He  has  that  faith  in  the 
people  which  it  is  so  hard  to  find  in  a  country  where 
society  rests  on  a  foundation  of  sharply-distinct  and 
separated  classes.  He  is,  as  a  consequence,  the  instinc- 
tive enemy  of  imperialism  and  all  it  tends  to  and  longs 
for,  hating  its  dreams  and  ventures  with  a  hearty 
hatred.  He  believes  thoroughly  in  movement  forward, 
which,  for  an  old  man  in  an  old  country,  is  a  sign  of  a 
very  young  heart.  The  very  atmosphere  of  Europe  is 
depressing  and  calculated  to  make  one  lose  faith  in 
human  progress.  Indeed,  I  have  noticed  that  even  the 
American  domiciled  long  in  the  Old  World  loses  insen- 
sibly that  sense  of  the  recognition  of  a  common  man- 
hood in  all  men  which  is  a  part  of  our  inheritance. 

Mr.  Gladstone  out  of  office  was  as  much  a  power  as 
in.  The  Marquis  of  Hartington  was  the  technical 
leader  of  the  Opposition,  and  did  really  "  drive  the  politi- 
cal machine"  on  the  floor  of  the  House  of  Commons,  but 
Mr.  Gladstone  was  the  heart  of  the  party,  the  power 
around  which  the  intelligence  and  personal  confidence 
of  liberal  England  gathered,  as  the  parliamentary  cam- 
paign of  1880  abundantly  demonstrated.  To-day  he 
is  again  at  the  head  of  the  England  that  is  making 
history. 

"Free  trade"  is  a  popular  political  enthusiasm  or 
sentiment  with  the  Englishman,  something  like  the 
instinctive  assertion  of  the  Monroe  doctrine  with  us, 
and  in  this  matter  Mr.  Gladstone  is  the  prophet  of  his 


92  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

people.  For  it  he  has  labored  all  his  life,  and  has  a 
word,  in  season  or  out,  to  be  cast  on  good  soil  or  barren. 

During  this  visit  the  subject  had  not  come  up,  but 
at  the  door  of  the  room,  after  having  shaken  hands,  it 
seemed  to  strike  Mr.  Gladstone  suddenly,  and,  coming 
out  into  the  hall,  he  resumed  conversation  earnestly  on 
this  new  tack,  firing  out  some  facts  and  arguments  from 
a  thoroughly  unstudied  and  unconventional  position 
over  the  banisters. 

"  Oh !  I  want  to  say  a  word,  frankly  and  heartily, 
as  we  English  always  do :  Why  do  you  persist  in  your 
illogical  policy  of  protection  ?"  ete.,  etc.  "  You  Ameri- 
cans are  having  everything  your  own  way ;  you  are 
competing  against  us  all  the  time  in  manufactures; 
you  will  beat  us  finally  in  the  long  run.  Why  will 
you  retard  your  own  progress  ?" 

"  Well,  Mr.  Gladstone,  I  come  from  a  city  of  manu- 
facturers, and  we  are  perfectly  satisfied  with  our  rate 
of  progress ;  in  fact,  our  great  national  danger  is  always 
of  going  ahead  too  fast,  and  the  very  best  policy  for  us 
is  one  that  does  retard  us  a  little." 

And  the  momentary  colloquy  closed  as  discussions  on 
this  subject  always  do. 

LONDON. 


CHAPTER  X. 


AN   ENGLISH   ELECTION. 

FIXING  THE  TIME  OF  BATTLE — THE  BRIEF  CAMPAIGN — KE- 
TURNING  A  MEMBER — MEETING  OF  THE  ELECTORS — CON- 
TESTING A  SEAT — NATURE  AND  COST  OF  THE  EXPENSES  OF 
AN  ENGLISH  PARLIAMENTARY  ELECTION — THE  ENGLISH- 
WOMAN AT  THE  POLLS — WOMAN  AND  SOCIETY  IN  POLITICS. 

AN  English  parliamentary  election  is   so  different 
from  ours,  and  the  differences  show  so  sharply  some 


AN  ENGLISH  ELECTION.  93 

of  the  divergences  in  practice  of  our  twc  political 
systems,  which  are  so  similar  on  paper,  so  dissimilar  in 
fact,  that  they  can  best  be  developed  and  contrasted  in 
describing  the  practical  process  of  returning  a  member. 

In  the  first  place,  the  time  of  holding  elections 
is  not  fixed  by  law,  but  depends  on  the  will  of  either 
one  or  the  other  party, — an  immense  tactical  advantage 
for  whichever  party  is  able  to  secure  it.  When  Parlia- 
ment dissolves,  an  immediate  election  is  held  for  the 
next  one.  The  party  in  power  can  dissolve  whenever 
they  wish,  if  there  is  any  reason  so  to  do.  Disraeli 
was  watching,  for  instance,  the  whole  of  the  year  1879 
for  a  desirable  opportunity  to  dissolve  the  Parliament 
whose  limitation  of  seven  years  was  expiring,  ready  to 
do  so  at  whatever  moment  he  deemed  the  public  mind 
was  in  a  favorable  condition  to  return  a  Conservative 
majority  in  the  next.  But  while  the  party  in  power 
have  the  first  shot  for  this  great  chance  of  fixing  the 
time  of  battle,  the  Opposition,  if  it  should  find  itself 
strong  enough  to  defeat  the  Ministry,  can  bide  its  time 
for  that,  and  force  a  dissolution,  and  the  consequent  elec- 
tion of  a  new  Parliament  at  the  moment  of  its  choice. 
In  either  case  the  election  takes  place  at  the  will  of 
the  management  of  either  one  or  the  other  party,  and 
is  not  at  stated  periods  fixed  beforehand  by  law. 

In  the  second  place,  when  an  election  comes  the 
struggle  is  immediate,  short,  and  sharp.  Ten  to  twenty 
days  is  full  time  for  a  national  political  campaign  in 
England.  In  that  brief  time  all  the  work  is  done,  and 
the  struggle  is  over, — this,  too,  in  a  country  where  the 
public  pulse  does  not  beat  nearly  so  fast  as  with  us,  and 
where  ideas  travel  very  slowly.  From  London  to 
Edinburgh  is  in  railway  time  about  the  distance  from 
New  York  to  Pittsburgh,  but  an  idea  will  travel  from 
Maine  to  California  ten  times  faster  than  from  Surrey 
to  Scotland.  Nevertheless,  the  Englishman  puts  through 
his  political  campaigns  ten  times  more  rapidly  than, 
we  do. 


94  ENGLISH    POLITICS. 

The  process  of  an  election,  or  as  they  call  it  here 
" returning  a  member,"  is  in  this  wise:  When  the 
time  comes,  either  by  a  general  dissolution  or  by  cause 
of  a  special  vacancy,  a  writ  goes  out  from  Westminster 
to  each  constituency  (American,  election  district)  to  send 
forthwith,  or  within  a  certain  brief  time  mentioned,  the 
member  or  members  which  constitute  its  representation* 
as  fixed  by  law.  This  election  district  is  not  as  with 
us  a  given  number  of  population  temporarily  defined 
for  that  purpose.  It  is  a  borough,  a  county,  a  city,  a 
university  that  has  at  one  time  or  another  acquired  the 
right  to  a  certain  representation.  This  writ  goes  out 
to  the  returning  officer,  who  is  generally  the  head  of 
the  election  district  whatever  it  be,  the  mayor  of  a  city, 
the  high  sheriff  of  a  county. 

This  returning  officer  immediately  calls  a  public 
meeting  of  the  legal  electors  to  send  a  member.  This 
meeting  takes  place,  I  believe,  generally  about  two 
days  after  the  reception  of  the  writ.  The  returning 
officer  who  called  it  presides.  Any  elector  may  there 
nominate  a  member.  The  nomination  is  generally 
made  by  the  most  prominent  and  influential  gentleman 
in  the  county  or  borough.  If  it  is  seconded  by  four 
other  gentlemen,  so  that  five  electors  join  in  proposing, 
the  nomination  is  duly  and  fully  made.  The  presiding 
officer  waits  a  due  interval  to  hear  if  any  other  nomi- 
nations are  proposed,  and,  if  none  are,  he  then  and  there 
declares  that  the  nominee  proposed  is  duly  returned, 
and  issues  to  him  at  once  his  certificate,  and  the  whole 
thing  is  over. 

Should  there,  however,  be  any  other  candidates,  their 
friends  immediately  put  them  in  nomination,  the  names 
of  five  electors  in  each  case  being  needed  to  bring  a 
name  before  the  meeting.  WThen  two  or  more  have 
been  so  nominated  the  presiding  officer  announces  that 
the  electors  have  failed  to  make  any  return  and  that 
their  choice  must  be  decided  by  a  ballot,  and  he  fixes  a 
day  for  taking  this  ballot,  generally  from  two  to  ten 


AN  ENGLISH  ELECTION.  95 

days  from  the  meeting.  The  ballot  is  therefore  only  a 
contingency  in  an  English  election,  and  not  the  sonl  of 
it,  as  with  us.  In  ancient  times  it  hardly  came  into 
play  at  all,  and  even  in  the  general  election  of  1880 
very  many  members  were  returned  without  its  use. 

This  appeal  to  the  ballot  is  what  in  England  is  called 
contesting  a  county  or  borough.  "A  contest"  in  Eng- 
land is  not  a  scrutiny  of  the  vote  as  with  us,  but  exactly 
what  we  call  "running"  for  afiy  office. 

Before  any  candidate,  however,  is  declared  duly  in 
nomination,  he  must,  if  there  is  this  contest,  give  bond 
to  the  returning  officer,  with  two  good  securities,  for 
his  share  of  the  costs  of  the  election.  The  terms  and 
amount  of  this  bond  are  in  the  judgment  of  the  return- 
ing officer.  If  the  candidate  cannot  give  it,  his  nomina- 
tion drops.  Up  to  this  time  the  proceedings  have  cost 
nothing.  If  there  has  been  no  contest,  the  gentleman 
nominated  has  a  seat  in  Parliament  without  the  expendi- 
ture of  a  cent. 

With  the  "contest"  or  running,  however,  the  work 
gets  serious.  This  bond  is  the  check-rein  to  individual 
political  ambition  in  England.  A  member  of  Par- 
liament receives  no  salary ;  the  costs  of  obtaining  a 
scat  by  an  election  average  at  the  least  five  thousand 
dollars;  should  Parliament  dissolve  in  thirty  days  after 
it  convenes,  as  is  perfectly  possible,  the  seat  is  gone  and 
all  is  lost. 

It  is  always  a  mystery  to  an  American  politician  why 
the  expenses  of  an  English  election  are  so  heavy,  and 
what  they  can  be.  I  think  the  general  belief  among 
us  is  that  this  five  thousand  dollars — and  it  sometimes 
goes  up  to  twenty-five  thousand  dollars  or  over — 
is  simply  a  bribery  and  corruption  fund,  but  it  is  not  so 
necessarily,  and  hardly  ever  directly.  In  England  an 
election  is  an  affair  of  the  candidates  entirely,  and  not 
of  the  people,  as  with  us.  They  hold  it  and  conduct  it, 
and  not  the  state.  Out  of  their  own  pockets,  therefore, 
they  must  provide  for  all  the  expenses.  They  pay  for 


96  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

the  printing  of  the  tickets  and  all  blanks  and  forms, 
for  the  hiring  of  watchers,  inspectors,  and  clerks,  and 
for  the  rent  of  all  the  polling-places,  which  in  a  large 
district,  as  in  some  parts  of  London,  may  be  enormous. 
These  expenses  they  share  among  themselves,  and  it  is 
to  mutually  secure  these  that  the  bond  is  given. 

There  are  also  other  individual  expenses  which  are 
legitimate,  and  which  are  special  to  England.  The 
lower-class  Englishman  has  not  that  taste  for  politics 
which  is  inbred  with  us,  and  great  exertion  is  needed 
to  "get  out  the  vote,"  which  is  always  light  contrasted 
with  our  polling.  Now,  the  most  delicate  attention 
you  can  pay  the  English  voter  is  to  haul  him  to  the 
polls  in  an  open  two-horse  barouche.  The  lower-grade 
vote  generally  insists  on  this,  and  as  a  consequence  the 
outlay  for  carriages  is  always  a  tremendous  item  in  a 
candidate's  bill.  A  carriage  for  an  election  day  also  is 
apt  to  cost  more  than  for  any  other  day  in  the  year. 

Again,  the  canvass  in  England  is  conducted  through 
"  agents,"  whose  functions  will  be  explained  farther  on. 
These  agents  are  generally  local  attorneys.  As  many 
are  used  as  may  be  needed,  and  gradually  the  custom 
is  spreading  of  having  more  and  more,  until  now  I  am 
assured  that  in  a  rural  election  the  entire  local  bar  is  often 
divided  between  the  opposing  candidates.  These  at- 
torneys' fees,  too,  are  sometimes  regulated  on  the  same 
principle  as  are  the  bills  of  the  livery-stable  keepers. 
There  is  no  trouble  at  all  spending  the  five  thousand 
dollars — when  one  understands  the  customs  of  the 
country. 

Finally,  the  count  of  the  vote  is  made  by  the  candi- 
dates themselves,  and  not  by  the  state.  On  their  mutual 
report  of  the  result  the  returning  officer  makes  out  his 
certificate. 

The  most  novel  feature,  however,  by  all  odds,  of  an 
English  election  to  American  eyes  is  the  presence  of 
women  in  it;  and  the  active  part  they  take  in  the  can- 


AN  ENGLISH  ELECTION.  97 

vass.  There  is  no  Duchess  of  Devonshire  to  kiss  the 
butchers  nowadays,  but  the  ladies  of  England  freely 
lend  their  charms  to  the  adornment  of  the  hustings  all 
the  kingdom  over,  and  take  a  personal  share  and  intel- 
ligent sympathy  in  the  work.  The  wife,  mother,  and 
sisters  of  the  candidate,  and  sometimes  his  cousins 
and  his  aunts  and  his  friends,  appear  on  the  platform 
with  him,  or  ride  in  open  carriages  with  him  and  his 
party  from  point  to  point  during  the  canvass  of  a  city, 
or  on  the  critical  day  of  the  polling,  and  their  names, 
movements,  and  appearance  are  duly  chronicled  in  the 
daily  prints.  Gladstone's  wife  and  daughters  it  will  be 
remembered  were  with  him  through  all  his  wonderful 
invasion  of  Scotland,  and  they  also  "assisted"  his  son 
in  his  contest  for  an  English  seat.  A  youthful  Lord 
Ramsey  ran  on  the  Liberal  ticket  for  Liverpool  during 
my  stay  in  the  country.  His  young  wife  accompanied 
him  everywhere,  and  her  presence  really  seemed  to  be 
popularly  his  strong  point.  The  Liberal  papers  referred 
editorially  again  and  again  to  "  this  interesting  couple," 
and  kept  the  picture  steadily  before  the  people.  It 
evidently  was  a  political  force.  The  canvass  of  a 
county  whose  political  control  is  in  the  hands  of  a  great 
family,  may  be  almost  a  kind  of  picnic.  The  candidate 
drives  out  every  day  from  the  ca-t!c  with  a  brilliant 
party  of  lords  and  ladies,  and  if  he  is  fortunate  speaks 
on  the  platform  from  the  centre  of  a  bouquet  of 
countesses  and  Honorable  Marys, — a  lovely  kind  of 
election  committee  forever  out  of  the  reach  of  an  Ameri- 
can politician.  On  occasions  the  candidate  and  his 
friends  who  speak  with  him  appear  in  evening  dress 
and  with  bouquets  at  the  button-holes, — a  proceeding  that 
would  be  rather  desperate  here.  In  England  society 
is  a  power  in  politics;  here  it  is  something  which  the 
average  voter  resents. 

The  women  of  course  enter  into  politics  with  that 
charming  disregard  for  principles  and  regard  for  men 
which  is  so  pleasing  a  characteristic  of  the  sex  e*rery- 
B  9 


98  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

where,  and  their  participation  lends  a  piquant  flavor  to  a 
political  campaign  entirely  lost  to  us.  The  politics,  like 
the  Church,  of  an  old  family,  however,  is  generally  a 
matter  of  descent. 

It  is  not  likely  that  this  phase  of  political  life  will 
ever  obtain  here.  In  England  politics  enters  into  the 
very  fibre  of  society,  and  is  part  of  the  social  structure. 
The  family  is  the  unit  of  society  there,  and  not  the 
individual,  as  with  us.  The  government  of  the  king- 
dom up  to  this  time  has  been  entirely  a  matter  of 
certain  great  families, — part  of  their  property  and 
occupation, — and  naturally  all  the  family  take  an  in- 
terest in  it.  Gentlemen — the  young  sons  of  peers  or 
influential  county  families — as  little  able  to  do  any 
political  work  as  school-girls  themselves,  also  often  go 
around  with  the  party,  lending  the  influence  of  the 
family  and  name  by  their  presence.  It  is  something 
like  sending  the  empty  family-carriage  to  a  funeral,  but 
it  does  the  work  with  the  English  voter. 

Englishwomen,  it  should  be  added,  by  the  force  of 
this  kind  of  education  learn,  after  a  fashion,  a  good  deal 
of  politics,  and  have  a  knowledge  of  public  affairs  and 
take  an  interest  in  their  country  which  the  American 
woman  does  not.  When  a  girl  can  help  her  lover  into 
Parliament,  which,  in  England,  means  something  much 
more  than  going  to  Congress  here,  or  a  married  woman 
can  distribute  secretaryships  or  curacies  for  social  vas- 
salage faithfully  performed,  politics  becomes  fully  as 
interesting  as  dancing  or  millinery. 

LONDON. 


THE  INTERROGATION  POINT  IN  POLITICS.     9<j 


CHAPTER  XI. 

THE   INTERROGATION   POINT   IN    POLITICS. 

A.N  ENGLISH  USAGE— THE  GOVERNMENT  AT  THE  BAR  OF  THK 
HOUSE  OF  COMMONS — THE  MEMBER  AT  THE  BAR  OF  THK 
PEOPLE. 

THP:RE  is  one  practical  point  in  British  politics  so 
unlike  anything  in  our  own,  and  so  marked  in  their 
system,  permeating  it  from  top  to  bottom,  that  it  is 
worthy  of  special  presentment.  It  is  the  usage  of 
interrogation. 

From  first  to  last,  the  Government  to  the  House  of 
Commons,  the  members  of  the  House  to  their  respective 
constituencies,  are  always  on  the  stand,  bound  to  an- 
swer clearly  and  explicitly  any  question  asked  in  good 
faith  and  in  the  language  of  gentlemen.  Information 
from  the  Government  to  the  people  is  not,  as  with  us, 
given  in  lengthy  argumentative  messages  or  elaborate 
speeches,  but  daily,  and  in  brief,  direct  replies  to  spe- 
cific inquiries.  It  is  simple  question  and  answ<-r,  a- 
plain  and  unequivocal  as  the  talk  bet-ween  two  men  on 
a  matter  of  business. 

This  usage  probably  grows  out  of  the  admitted 
candor  and  straightforwardness  of  the  British  char- 
acter, which  loves  simplicity  and  directness  and  honors 
them,  and  which  hates  indirectness  and  concealment. 

I  can  best  illustrate  this  point  of  practical  politics  by 
describing  briefly  its  mode  of  use  in  the  two  instances 
in  which  it  is  brought  into  most  marked  prominence, 
— viz.,  the  interrogation  of  the  Government  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  and  of  the  representative,  or 
"  member,"  as  he  is  here  called,  when  he  appears  before 
his  constituency  from  year  to  year,  either  to  stand  for 


100  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

election  or  report  to  his  county  the  action  of  the  House 
during  its  expired  session. 

In  Parliament  there  is  one  distinctive  feature  to  which 
there  is  nothing  of  parallel  or  analogy  in  our  Congress. 
When  you  enter  the  House  of  Commons  the  object 
which  perhaps  strikes  you  first  is  "the  treasury  bench/7 
a  large,  solid  table-desk,  covered  with  papers,  and 
standing  directly  in  front  of  the  Speaker's  desk.  If 
you  are  acquainted  with  the  personnel  of  the  politics 
of  the  day,  you  see  around  this  table  the  familiar 
features  of  the  leading  ministers, — the  Ministry  of 
England,  the  Cabinet  of  our  Government.  They  are 
there  with  their  briefs  and  data,  and  sometimes  with 
clerks  to  answer  squarely  and  directly  and  immediately 
such  questions  as  may  be  put  to  them  by  the  represen- 
tatives of  the  people.  This  is  done  daily,  I  might 
almost  say  hourly.  Sometimes,  indeed,  a  whole  session 
may  be  simply  a  fire  of  question  and  answer, — the  ques- 
tions a  brief  sentence  or  two,  carefully  framed,  the 
answers  equally  short  and  well  weighed,  for  on  these 
answers  the  Government  must  stand.  It  cannot  shelter 
itself  behind  a  mountain  of  words. 

On  this  right  to  demand  of  the  Government  full  and 
explicit  information  on  any  subject  at  any  time  there 
are  no  limitations  by  law.  There  are  limitations,  how- 
ever, necessarily,  by  usage.  The  same  love  of  fair  play 
which  has  evolved  this  system  of  interrogation  demands 
that,  in  matters  so  weighty  as  affairs  of  state,  fair  and 
due  notice  shall  be  given  of  the  question  to  be  asked. 
An  immature  or  hasty  answer  might  be  injurious  to  the 
best  interests  of  the  country,  and,  besides,  would  not  be 
entitled  to  the  weight  and  consideration  of  one  duly 
matured  and  carefully  framed. 

Accordingly,  it  has  grown  into  a  usage  that  the 
questions  to  the  Ministry  shall  be  submitted  to  them 
in  writing  at  least  one  day  before  the  answer  is  de- 
manded. The  questions  are,  therefore,  generally  handed 
into  the  treasury  bench  on  the  floor  of  Parliament  the 


THE  INTERROGATION  POINT  IN  POLITICS.  1Q1 

day  before  an  answer  is  publicly  asked  on  the  floor. 
Sometimes  they  are  read  aloud,  and  sometimes  only 
quietly  handed  to  one  of  the  ministers  in  the  most 
informal  way,  pencilled  on  a  bit  of  paper,  the  back  of 
an  envelope,  or  anything  that  comes  to  hand. 

There  being  no  limitation  by  law,  any  member  of 
course,  if  he  chooses,  may  spring  any  question  without 
a  moment's  notice,  and  demand  a  snap  answer.  This 
however,  is  considered  "  bad  form,"  only  injures  the 
individual  who  attempts  it,  and  the  public  sense  of 
fairness  justifies  the  minister  in  declining  to  reply  until 
he  has  had  proper  time.  I  have  seen  this  done,  and 
am  satisfied  that  the  "  smart"  member  who  attempted 
it  only  hurt  himself;  and,  in  truth,  the  minister's  dig- 
nified refusal  to  return  any  answer  until  he  could  give 
one  worthy  of  a  responsible  Government  was  applauded 
by  the  Opposition  as  well  as  by  the  Right. 

The  Ministry,  again,  may  decline  to  answer  any 
question  when,  in  their  judgment,  the  answer  would 
be  detrimental  to  the  interests  of  the  nation  at  that 
time.  This  is,  the  same  ar^  with  us,  a  right  which 
must  be  exercised  judiciously  r.s  well  as  honestly. 

Lastly,  the  questions  must,  of  course,  be  put  in  good 
faith  and  couched  in  respectful  language.  The  buf- 
foonery which  so  often  obtains  at  Harrisburg  or  the 
rough  vulgarity  of  Albany  would  simply  put  its  users 
out  of  the  doors  at  Westminster. 

It  is  on  the  hustings,  however,  that  this  custom  of 
interrogation  takes  its  most  striking  and  popular  form. 
There  the  member  answers  to  his  constituency  face  to 
face  in  their  home,  just  as  the  Government  answers  to 
the  members  in  the  House.  The  same  general  rules  as 
to  notice,  good  faith,  respectful  language,  etc.,  prevail 
as  on  the  floor  of  Parliament,  relaxed  a  little,  perhaps, 
by  the  popular  character  of  the  assembly  and  place. 
It  is  deemed  better,  on  the  whole,  not  to  notice  a  vul- 
garity on  the  stump, — or  perhaps  to  cautiously  call 
attention  to  it, — but  to  go  on  and  answer  the  question 


102  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

anyhow.  These  questions  take  the  widest  possible 
range,  and  are  always  intensely  practical.  What  are 
the  member's  views  on  the  Eastern  question,  and  on 
"farmers'  rights"  and  "game-laws"  at  home?  How 
did  he  vote  on  the  Indian  appropriation,  and  how  were 
his  tenant-leases  drawn  this  spring?  What  are  his 
views  on  shooting  rabbits  or  burying  dissenters? 
The  candidate,  or  member,  is  sometimes  owner  of  half 
the  county,  and  half  the  voters  are  his  tenants.  There 
is  great  latitude  in  these  interrogations,  and  some  of 
them  are  very  curious  and  personal.  They  illustrate 
thoroughly,  however,  the  campaign,  and  enable  a 
stranger  to  understand  the  situation  rapidly,  and  better 
than  he  would  from  listening  to  a  dozen  of  one-  or 
two-hour  speeches. 

There  are  advantages  and  disadvantages  to  this  sys- 
tem on  which  I  have  not  room  at  this  time  to  dwell, 
but  which  every  expert  in  practical  politics  will  readily 
see  for  himself.  In  England  the  dangers  of  the  prac- 
tice are  largely  lessened  by  that  spirit  of  fair  play  and 
directness  which  animates  the  nation  and  governs  all 
its  popular  assemblies.  There  would  be  danger  in 
many  parts  of  our  country  that  freedom  of  interroga- 
tion would  degenerate  into  license  and  insolence,  which 
would  be  thoughtlessly  applauded. 

The  advantages  are  very  great.  It  tends  to  check 
sophomoric  speech-making ;  it  brings  the  representative 
and  his  constituent  in  direct  and  very  satisfactory  re- 
lation ;  it  clears  up  popular  doubt  or  uncertainties,  be- 
cause the  issues  are  framed  in  popular  form  by  the 
voter,  not  for  him,  and  answered  direct  Yes  or  No ;  it 
lets  the  member  know  clearly  what  his  constituents 
want,  and  on  what  issues  they  are  interested ;  and, 
lastly,  it  is  essentially  democratic.  The  Government 
is  always  at  the  bar  of  the  House,  and  the  House  is 
always  at  the  bar  of  the  people. 

LONDON. 


COMPARATIVE   COST  OF  GOVERNMENT.         1Q3 


CHAPTER  XII. 

COMPARATIVE  COST  OF  GOVERNMENT. 

GO  VEHEMENT  SALARIES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 
— EXPENDITURE,  TAXES,  AND  DEBTS — THE  MONEY  ECONOMY 
OF  REPUBLICS. 

THERE  is  a  certain  element  of  ignorance  and  discon- 
tent in  our  country  which  is  always  complaining  of  the 
extravagance  and  cost  of  our  republican  Government, 
national,  State,  and  municipal,  and  flippantly  referring 
to  European  Governments,  most  generally  that  of  Eng- 
land, as  being  something  better,  more  satisfactory  and 
economical.  I  propose  to  show  the  folly  of  this  kind 
of  talk,  not  by  any  argument,  but  simply  by  citing 
some  facts  which  will  illustrate  the  cost  of  government 
abroad. 

I  quote  England,  because,  first,  that  kingdom  is  most 
frequently  held  up  to  us  as  an  example;  and,  secondly, 
because  it  is  a  constitutional  Government  of  large  free- 
dom, and  the  circumstances  of  comparison  with  our- 
selves are,  therefore,  fairer. 

The  Lord  Mayor  of  London  receives  a  salary  of 
$50,000  a  year  and  a  fine  residence, — the  historic 
u  Mansion  House"  of  the  city, — just  what  we  give,  the 
President  of  the  United  States. 

The  young  Marquis  of  Lome,  as  governor-general 
of  Canada,  receives  a  salary  of  $50,000  a  year  and  a 
residence;  again  just  what  we  pay  our  highest  officer. 

The  English  ambassador  at  Paris  receives  a  salary 
the  same  as  that  of  our  President,  $50,000  a  year,  as 
also  does  the  lord  high  chancellor. 

The  money  cost  of  our  chief  executive  is,  therefore, 
only  that  of  a  whole  class  of  officials,  say,  of  third-rate 


104  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

rank  and  importance  in  this  monarchy  and  empire.  We 
begin  our  scale  of  salaries  at  their  third  degree. 

The  Lord-Lieutenant  of  Ireland  receives  a  salary  of 
£20,000,  or  $100,000  a  year,  for  governing  a  small  state 
with  less  than  six  million  inhabitants.  He  gets,  also,  in 
addition,  $35,000  more  in  salaries  for  his  household, — 
not  an  official  household,  but  a  personal  one, — chamber- 
lain, ushers,  "  gentlemen-at-large,"  master  of  the  horse, 
gentlemen  of  the  bedchamber,  etc.  This  official  start.s 
with  just  twice  the  salary  of  our  President  and  ten 
times  that  of  the  governor  of  Pennsylvania. 

The  Prince  of  Wales  for  serving  the  state  in  "that 
station  to  which  it  has  pleased  God  to  call"  him,  gets 
$200,000, — four  times  what  is  paid  by  us  for  the  ser- 
vices of  a  chief  ruler. 

The  Queen  of  England  for  the  royal  family — her- 
self, her  children,  and  her  relatives — receives  from  the 
state  annuities  amounting  to  the  total  sum  of  £547,000 
— say  $2,735,000.  We  have  no  charge,  burden,  or  out- 
lay of  any  kind  with  which  to  compare  this. 

The  "Church  Establishment"  is  another  political 
tax  with  which  we  have  nothing  to  place  in  comparison, 
and  is  a  very  substantial  item  to  the  taxpayer.  The 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  for  instance,  is  paid  $75,- 
000  per  year ;  the  Archbishop  of  York,  $50,000  per 
year ;  the  Bishop  of  London,  also,  $50,000  a  year, — up 
to  and  over  our  Presidential  grade.  The  bulk  of  the 
bishops,  however, — there  are  twenty-eight, — receive  but 
from  $20,000  to  $25,000  per  year. 

As  an  incidental  evidence  of  the  comparative  scale 
of  cost  of  British  Government,  I  may  mention  that  the 
English  minister  to  Switzerland  receives  from  his  coun- 
try a  salary  more  than  twice  as  large  as  that  received 
by  the  president  of  the  Swiss  republic  himself.  The 
British  minister  at  Washington  also  receives  $30,000  a 
year,  three-fifths  of  our  President's  salary,  and  more 
than  the  salary  President  Lincoln  was  paid. 

Castlas  and  palaces,  sometimes  furnished,  and  with 


COMPARATIVE   COST  OF  GOVERNMENT.         105 

even  the  silver  provided,  are  "  thrown  in"  with  these 
generous  allowances. 

The  British  Cabinet  officers  receive  generally  $25,000 
against  our  $8000  for  the  same  duty. 

Now  for  the  "  territories,"  or  provincial  possessions, 
of  England.  The  governor  of  Ceylon  receives  $35,000 
per  year  ;  the  governor  of  New  South  Wales,  the  same  ; 
the  governor  of  Victoria,  an  Australian  province,  $50,- 
000  ;  the  governor  of  New  Zealand,  $37,500 ;  the  gov- 
ernor of  Jamaica,  $35,000,  and  Sir  Bartle  Frere,  in 
Africa,  has  been  getting  $30,000 ;  and  so  the  list  might 
be  extended  in  all  quarters  of  the  globe.  Compare  this 
with  our  modest  territorial  budget. 

But  let  us  come  to  some  departments  of  expendi- 
tures not  personal  and  contrast  our  burdens. 

Take  a  single  item.  The  estimate  of  appropriations 
asked  for  the  army  for  this  year  by  the  Conservative 
administration  was  over  $75,000,000.  This  sum  has 
already  been  exceeded,  it  is  believed,  by  about  33  per 
cent.,  making  the  cost  of  the  army  this  year  $100.000,- 
000  or  over.  And  this  is  cheap  for  Europe,  for  the 
English  army  is  a  small  one  when  compared  with  the 
continental  masses  of  legions.  In  France  the  military 
burden  is  worse,  and  in  Germany  it  is  appalling. 

The  amount  asked  for  the  English  navy  for  the 
current  year  is  £10,860,901,— nearly  $55,000,000. 
This  one  sum  of  naval  cost  is  more  than  our  entire 
u  civil  service  and  miscellaneous"  expenditure  for  1878. 
Or  put  it  this  way:  The  cost  of  the  army  and  navy  to 
England  for  one  year  is  about  equal  to  all  our  current 
expenses  of  all  kinds,  saving  the  item  of  interest  on  the 
public  debt. 

There  is  always  some  difficulty  in  getting  the  exact 
expenditures  of  the  English  Government,  but  the  reve- 
nues raised  in  1879  from  the  kingdom  alone — the  small 
territories  of  England,  Wales,  Scotland, and  Ireland,  and 
not  the  empire  of  foreign  possessions — amounted  to  £83,- 
000,000,  or  about  $415,000,000.  As  England  is  con- 


106  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

stantly  going  detper  into  debt,  this  sum  represents  some 
millions  less  than  her  expenditures.  Our  national  ex- 
penditure, including  interest  on  the  public  debt,  was, 
for  the  year  ending  June  30,  1879,  $261,000,000.  In 
other  words,  our  cost  of  government  is  but  three-fifths 
of  that  of  the  English,  while  our  population  is  one-third 
more,  and  our  area  of  territory  is  twenty-five  times  as 


The  final  proof,  however,  in  the  comparative  bur- 
den of  government  will  be  found  in  the  public  debts  of 
the  two  countries.  It  is  they  which  represent  the  sum 
of  costs  and  the  weight.  Here  the  contrast  is  sharp : 
our  national  debt  is  something  under  two  billions  of 
dollars,  and  is  diminishing,  and  England's  national  debt 
is  £777,781,590,  the  enormous  sum  of  almost  four 
billions  of  dollars,  and  increasing.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
they  count  it  now  only  by  the  interest,  which,  in  1878, 
at  their  low  rates,  amounted  to  £28,412,750.  The 
country  has  lost  all  hope  of  paying  off  the  principal ; 
but  that  is  not  the  worst, — it  is  not  keeping  it  down; 
and  in  that  is  seen  the  weight  of  the  burden  of  the  cost 
of  government,  which  is  greater  than  the  people  can  or 
will  bear.  Since  1862,  when  the  interest  on  the  debt 
was  £26,000,000,  there  has  been  a  steady  and  gradual 
rise,  sometimes  halting  for  a  year  or  experiencing  an 
inappreciable  diminution,  it  is  true,  but  never  holding 
the  gain,  until  it  now  stands  at  over  £28,000,000. 

And  now,  how  is  all  this  to  be  met  ?  This  is  the 
individual  question  for  our  grumblers  to  confront. 
The  Englishman  staggers  under  taxes  of  which  we 
happily  know  nothing  at  all,  or  very  little, — a  searching 
income-tax,  to  begin  with,  stamp  acts  and  excise,  probate 
and  customs  levies.  Many  of  these  are  of  heavy  weight 
when  contrasted  with  ours,  even  under  the  pressure  of 
war.  The  probate  of  a  poor  man's  will  costs  two  per 
cent,  on  the  sum  proved.  A  tax  answering  to  our 
"  collateral  inheritance"  statute  lays  a  levy  of  one  per 
cent,  on  direct  or  lineal  succession, — i.e.,  the  passage  of 


COMPARATIVE   COST  OF  GOVERNMENT.        1Q7 

property  from  father  to  son.  When  the  legatee  is 
farther  out  than  a  grand-uncle  or  aunt,  this  tax  rises  to 
ten  per  cent.  Patents  for  inventions  cost  $25  at  every 
step,  the  final  issuing  of  the  patent  costing  from  $250 
to  $500  in  addition.  There  are  pro-rata  taxes  on  in- 
surance policies,  on  every  lease,  on  mortgages,  on  con- 
veyances, on  settlements,  on  bonds,  on  covenants  and 
bills  of  exchange  and  bank-notes.  Then  there  are 
stamp-taxes, — a  tax  on  every  receipt  given  for  a  sum 
over  $10,  on  licenses,  on  houses,  on  liquors.  An  at- 
torney must  pny  down  $250  to  the  state  on  his  admis- 
sion as  barrister;  a  notary  public,  $150  on  receiving  })is 
commission.  You  pay  $2.50  for  the  privilege  of  carrying 
a  gun,  nnd  $3.75  for  the  right  to  call  yourself  a  servant 
and  hire  out  as  one  ;  a  marriage-license  OMS  si 0.50,  and, 
if  you  want  to  marry  without  previous  residence  in  the 
parish  or  district,  the  special  license  costs  $150. 

Tli is  list  might  be  extended  almost  indefinitely.  I 
only  cite  a  few  instances  at  hand  to  illustrate  the  weight 
of  taxation  in  a  well-governed  European  state,  and 
how  it  presses  in  on  the  individual,  annoying,  hamper- 
ing, and  embarrassing  him  at  every  point  and  turn. 

In  fact,  we  have  no  idea  at  all  in  our  fortunate 
country  of  what  taxation  in  Europe  is.  In  Italy,  for 
instance,  a  country  where  the  vast  mass  of  the  people 
are  wretchedly  poor, — so  poor  that  one  who  has  not 
seen  them  can  have  no  conception  of  their  poverty, — 
the  annual  expenditure  of  the  national  Government  is 
greater  than  ours,  ami  there  are  but. 27,000,000  people 
to  raise  it  from,  instead  of  45,000,000,  as  in  our  case. 
The  taxation  to  meet  it  requires  a  levy  of  over  $10 
per  head.  As  a  sample  of  their  power  to  bear 
taxation,  I  may  mention  that  there  is  an  income-tax  of 
third-en  per  cent.,  which  is  deducted  from  even  a  for- 
eigner's interest  on  an  Italian  Government  security. 

It  is  to  be  said  in  favor  of  England,  at  least,  that, 
while  the  people  pay  high  for  public  service,  they  get 
good  work, — a  better  return  than  we  do.  Their  public 


108  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

work  is  very  thorough,  and  the  grade  of  the  public 
servant  higher  than  with  us.  All  this  insures  a  certain 
economy  in  the  long  run,  and  inures  to  the  stability  of 
government  and  the  good  of  the  community. 

I  am  not  writing  to  this  question,  however.  Ours 
is  better  for  the  cost  than  theirs  is  for  their  cost.  It  is 
likely  that  we  both  err, — they  in  having  too  costly  a 
public  service,  we  in  demanding  too  cheap  a  one.  The 
point  I  want  to  make  is  the  immense  cheapness  of  gov- 
ernment under  our  system  as  compared  with  that  of  any 
other.  It  would  be  better  if  we  would  pay  a  better  price 
for  all  public  service  and  demand  a  better  service,  more 
solid  work,  and  a  higher  class  of  men  to  do  it, — men 
of  education,  character,  and  responsibility. 

These  things,  however,  are  other  questions,  and  open 
up  endless  argument  in  a  hundred  directions.  The  one 
point  we  are  considering  now  is  the  immediate  cheap- 
ness of  republican  government.  It  is  rather  fashion- 
able among  a  certain  class  of  people  to  be  forever  de- 
claiming about  the  wastefulness,  cost,  and  extravagance 
of  a  government  carried  on  by  the  people,  and  not  by 
a  special  class  trained  or  born  to  the  work.  I  maintain 
that  a  people's  government  is  the  cheapest  on  earth,  and 
the  republics  of  the  United  States  and  Switzerland  and 
France  are  the  proofs.  An  analysis  of  the  national 
administration  of  France  will  show  that  all  those  de- 
partments of  the  Government  which  are  new  and  dis- 
tinctly republican  are  managed  cheaply  or  at  a  mode- 
rate cost  to  the  nation.  Those  departments  which  are 
yet  run  in  the  old  monarchic  grooves,  as  the  diplomatic 
corps,  for  instance,  are  costly.  Switzerland,  a  republic 
with  a  population  of  3,000,000,  has  a  yearly  govern- 
mental expenditure  of  $8,500,000;  the  4,000,000  of 
economical  Hollanders,  who  indulge,  however,  in  the 
luxury  of  a  monarch,  spend  $50,000,000. 

In  fact,  economy  is  an  incident  of  republican 
government. 

LONDON. 


PARLIAMENT:  THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS.     JQ9 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

PARLIAMENT. 

POLITICAL  TOPOGRAPHY  OF  THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS — SITTING 
IN  LINE  OF  BATTLE — PLAN  OF  THE  HOUSE — TAKING  THE 
AYES  AND  NOES  BY  A  HUMAN  COUNT — SANCTITY  OF  THE 
FLOOR— THE  "WHIP." 

THROUGH  the  attention  of  one  of  the  leaders  of  the 
Conservatives,  the  party  in  power  in  England  at  the 
time  of  my  seeing  it,  I  enjoyed  the  courtesy  of  seeing 
the  House  of  Commons  from  its  own  floor.  This  is 
rather  an  exceptional  privilege  and  a  very  desirable  one ; 
the  strangers'  gallery,  which  is  cramped  and  closely 
enough  guarded  too,  giving  one  a  view  of  only  half  the 
house,  and  a  very  unsatisfactory  one  at  that. 

Everything  in  England  preaches  history  if  you  have 
ears  to  hear  and  a  mind  to  understand,  and  this  jealous 
guarding  of  the  privacy  of  Parliament  comes  down  as 
a  usage  from  troublous  times  when,  if  the  chamber  of 
the  House  of  Commons  had  been  open  to  visitors,  im- 
proper influences  might  have  controlled  the  action  of  its 
members.  Even  now  the  chance  presence  of  the  Prince 
of  Wales  in  the  galleries  is  absurdly  remarked  on,  and 
so  great  is  the  sanctity  of  the  floor  of  the  House  of 
Commons  that  the  messengers  and  servants  of  the  House 
itself  dare  not  tread  on  it  when  the  House  is  in  session. 
If  a  message  is  brought  to  it  from  the  House  of  Peers, 
the  messenger  advances  to  the  bar  of  the  House, — an 
imaginary  barrier  supposed  to  be  swung  across  the  floor 
from  the  ends  of  the  lower  benches  on  each  side  of  the 
room, — and  it  is  there  taken  from  him  by  the  clerk  or 
a  member  and  conveyed  to  the  Speaker's  desk.  In  the 
same  way,  if  you  send  in  your  card  to  a  member,  no 

10 


HO  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

page  or  servant  delivers  it  at  his  seat.  This  messenger 
again  halts  at  the  bar.  The  nearest  member,  seeing  it 
is  a  private  message,  takes  it  and  passes  it  on  until  it 
reaches  your  friend  or  acquaintance.  This  service  of 
courtesy  the  members  hourly  do  for  each  other  rather 
than  suffer  a  sacred  old  form  to  be  infringed  on  or 
weakened. 

The  reserved  place  on  the  floor  which  the  modern 
centuries  have  wrested  from  the  old  fear  and  conservative 
tradition  is  a  small  compartment  capable  of  seating 
seven  persons,  or  eight  if  they  squeeze.  It  is  on  the 
floor  of  the  -House,  but  carefully  railed  off  from  the 
members'  seats.  You  can  communicate  with  the  mem- 
bers, however,  who  are  in  the  habit  of  coming  up  to 
the  "  reservation"  and  speaking  with  their  friends  across 
the  railing.  Admission  to  this  bench  is  given  only  on 
the  special  order  of  the  Speaker  in  each  case.  When  once 
you  are  in  this  intimate  inclosure,  which  in  appearance 
much  resembles  the  prisoners'  dock  in  our  county  court- 
rooms, you  have  an  excellent  view  of  the  whole  house 
and  everything  that  is  going  on.  You  can  see  every- 
thing and  hear  everything.  In  the  galleries,  a  large 
portion  of  the  time,  you  can  do  neither. 

On  taking  my  seat  inside  of  this  modern  and  very 
moderate  indentation  into  the  British  constitution  I  was 
amused  to  see  how  very  thoroughly  the  American  was 
there.  The  theory  of  this  "  private  bench"  is  that  it  is 
a  place  where  members  may  have  an  opportunity  to 
speak  to  and  see  influential  personages  of  the  kingdom 
whom  they  ought  to  be  able  to  consult  or  communicate 
with  without  leaving  the  chamber.  Of  the  persons  who 
occupied  the  bench  this  evening  of  which  I  write,  one 
was  an  ex-senator  of  the  United  States,  a  second  an 
American  doctor  of  divinity,  a  third  an  ex-Cabinet  min- 
ister of  the  United  States,  and  another  of  the  two  re- 
maining was  certainly  a  fellow-citizen,  but  I  did  not 
know  him.  Five  of  the  seven  seats  were  thus  held  by 
the  Yankee, — a  small  army  of  occupation. 


PARLIAMENT:    THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS,     m 

Strangers,  however,  whether  favored  with  the  "dock 
on  the  floor"  or  less  fortunate  with  a  seat  in  the  delusive 
galleries,  can  hardly  complain  of  their  accommodations 
from  a  House  which  has  not  accommodated  itself. 

It  is  a  literal  fact  that  there  are  not  seats  enough  in 
the  House  of  Commons  to  seat  its  own  members  should 
they  all  attend  at  one  time.  In  this  House  there 
are  six  hundred  and  seventy-eight  members,  and  there 
are  seats  for  but  four  hundred  and  seventy-six.  By  the 
usage  of  the  House,  therefore,  no  member  is  entitled  to 
his  seat  unless  he  is  in  at  prayers, — a  rule  which  has 
something  of  a  schoolboy  sound  to  us.  Indeed,  the 
schoolboy  atmosphere  of  the  House,  to  which  I  shall 
again  refer,  is  very  marked,  and  forces  itself  on  one's 
thought  all  the  time. 

The  whole  matter  of  seating  is  very  different  from 
ours,  and  conditions  the  appearance  of  the  House,  the 
habit  and  style  of  speaking,  and,  to  some  extent,  the 
usage  and  course  of  procedure.  In  truth,  the  political 
parties  sit  in  line  of  battle.  I  will  attempt  to  make  it 
as  clear  as  possible. 

In  the  first  place,  there  are  no  desks  or  tables  for  the 
members, — nothing  but  long  rows  of  red-cushioned 
benches,  four  tiers,  I  think,  of  them  rising  from  the 
floor. 

These  benches  run  along  the  two  sides  of  the  room 
in  straight  lines.  The  room  is  a  long  rectangle,  with 
the  Speaker's  and  clerks'  desks  at  the  one  end  of  it,  the 
general  door  at  the  other.  The  rows  of  benches  start 
from  the  upper  end  of  the  room,  "  right"  and  "  left" 
from  the  Speaker's  desk,  running  down  almost  to  the 
door.  An  imaginary  line  drawn  from  the  lower  end 
of  the  benches  across  the  room  is  "  the  bar."  These 
long  parallel  rows  of  benches  are  divided  again  in  the 
middle  by  a  narrow  aisle  running  up  from  the  lower 
tier  to  the  highest,  for  purposes  of  access.  This  is 
called  u  the  gangway." 

The  members  of  the  Government  party  always  ait  in 


112  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

the  tiers  of  benches  to  the  right  of  the  Speaker,  and  are 
known  as  "  the  Right."  The  members  of  the  Opposi- 
tion party  all  sit  in  the  benches  to  the  left  of  the 
Speaker,  and  are  known  as  "  the  Left."  The  party 
forces  are  thus  always  massed  on  the  floor  and  face 
each  other.  These  grand  parliamentary  divisions  of 
" Right"  and  "Left"  are  further  brigaded  by  the  " gang- 
way-line," the  regulars  sitting  "  above  the  gangway" 
and  the  irregulars  of  either  side  sitting  "  below  the 
gangway."  For  instance,  to-day  the  straight-out  Con- 
servatives, who  have  the  government,  sit  on  the  right 
above  the  gangway.  The  independent  Conservatives, 
on  whom  they  can  generally  depend,  but  not  always, 
sit  below  them, — i.e.,  on  the  right  side  below  the  gang- 
way. The  straight-out  Liberals,  or  Opposition,  sit  on 
the  left  above  the  gangway,  the  extreme  Liberals,  or 
Radicals,  just  below  them, — i.e.,  on  the  left  below  the 
gangway. 

This  custom  divides  the  floor  to  the  eye  into  four 
distinct  political  divisions,  and  one  can  always  see  at  a 
glance  how  a  vote  at  the  moment  would  stand.  It 
certainly  has  this  advantage. 

The  leaders  of  each  party,  again,  always  sit  on  the 
front  bench  of  their  respective  sides  "  above  the  gang- 
way," and  thus  face  each  other.  Thus,  to-day,  on  one 
short  bench  on  the  right,  sit  Sir  Stafford  Northcote, 
Colonel  Stanley,  secretary  of  state  for  war,  Mr.  Cross, 
etc.,  leaders  of  the  Right,  who,  of  course,  are  the  Min- 
istry, and  facing  them,  on  another  small  bench,  the 
Marquis  of  Hartington,  the  official  "  leader"  of  the 
Opposition,  William  Ewart  Gladstone,  Mr.  Foster, 
John  Bright,  Robert  Lowe.  The  election  which  took 
place  as  these  sketches  were  being  prepared  for  publi- 
cation has  just  reversed  these  seats. 

Between  these  two  "  benches  of  leaders"  is  placed  a 
large,  substantial,  square  office-desk  table  with  solid 
sides  and  drawers  to  the  floor.  This  is  strictly  the 
clerk's  table,  but  as  the  clerical  officials  of  the  House 


PARLIAMENT:    THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS.     H3 
UPPER  END. 


Speaker's  Table. 

e  the  Gangway. 

Bench.—  Opposition. 

5? 

1 

0 

(Treasury 
Bench. 

1 

' 

i             i 

" 

g          Gangway. 

Gangway.          g 

H 

Bar. 

£ 

*, 

•: 
»r 

S 

5 

o 

C 

a> 

1 

i 

1 

Door. 

LOWER  END. 
10* 


114  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

are  not  conspicuous,  and  the  right  at  least  of  this  table 
is  occupied  by  the  ministry,  with  their  secretaries  and 
papers,  this  section  of  the  floor  is  popularly  spoken  of 
as  the  treasury  bench,  although  that  designation  in 
strictness  belongs  only  to  the  short  front  bench  where 
sit  officially  the  leaders  of  the  Right. 

The  space  on  the  floor  between  the  two  tiers  of  right 
and  left  benches  is  perhaps  fifteen  to  twenty  feet,  and 
stretches  the  entire  length  of  the  room.  Its  uppermost 
boundary  is  "  the  treasury  bench,"  its  lowermost  limit 
"  the  bar."  This  is  the  arena,  or  clear  floor,  into  which 
our  members  are  so  fond  of  getting  when  they  want  to 
make  a  speech  and  give  the  nation  a  full  view  of  them- 
selves. No  member  of  the  English  Parliament,  how- 
ever, dare  speak  from  this  space,  which  is  always  kept 
clear.  It  is  an  established  rule  of  the  House,  come 
down  from  the  centuries  now,  and  a  usage  stronger  than 
any  written  regulation,  that  no  member  shall  address 
the  House  save  from  some  spot  where,  if  he  sat  down, 
he  would  sit  down  on  something.  So  every  member 
must  stand  to  his  bench,  and  most  unsatisfactory,  awk- 
ward, and  uncomfortable  places  are  they  to  speak  from. 
This  is  undoubtedly  a  "  survival,"  as  is  everything  you 
meet  here. 

I  furnish  a  rough  draft  or  diagram  which  gives  at  a 
glance  a  bird's-eye  view  of  the  political  topography  of 
the  House  of  Commons.  The  knowledge  of  this,  al- 
though apparently  an  incidental  and  ancillary  matter, 
is  very  important  for  a  familiar  understanding  of  Eng- 
lish politics,  as  the  ordinary  political  phraseology  is 
ba^ed  on  it,  and  in  speeches  and  newspaper  articles  the 
bulk  of  references  to  parties,  sections,  or  members  is 
made  to  them  not  by  name,  but  to  the  location  where 
they  sit. 

Sitting  on  long  benches,  or  pews,  with  no  conveni- 
ences of  table  or  desk,  the  members,  when  in  the 
chamber,  must  attend  to  public  business.  They  cannot 
write  private  letters  or  do  their  committee  work  during 


PARLIAMENT:   THE   HOUSE   OF  COMMONS.     H5 

the  session,  as  at  Washington.  Nor  can  they  adorn  the 
furniture  of  the  House  with  their  feet.  They  can, 
however,  when  bored,  read  newspapers  and  sleep, 
although  the  position  for  sleeping  is  not  a  happy  one, 
and  gives  the  sleeper  rather  a  drunken  and  disjointed 
air. 

The  members  sit  with  their  hats  on, — another  his- 
toric survival.  This  usage  comes  down  as  an  assertion 
of  the  dignity  and  sovereignty  of  the  House  that  it 
did  not  have  to  uncover  before  any  one.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  now  only  about  one-half  of  the  House  wear 
hats  at  one  time,  a  member  relieving  himself  appa- 
rently by  sometimes  wearing  and  sometimes  removing 
his  hat.  This  custom  in  this  century  results  in  any- 
thing but  an  effect  of  dignity,  particularly  when  the 
Hou.se  is  half-asleep.  In  fact,  it  often  gives  a  rowdy, 
bar-room  appearance  or  tone  to  the  whole  room.  It 
has,  perhaps,  one  advantage.  When  a  noble  lord  is 
undergoing  a  severe  attack  from  the  champion  of  the 
other  side,  he  simply  thrusts  both  hands  away  down 
into  his  trousers-pockets,  jams  his  broad-rimmed  silk 
hat  far  down  over  his  eyes,  projects  his  motionless 
crossed  legs  stiffly  forward,  and  in  this  statesmanlike 
iotrenchment  no  movement  or  play  of  his  features  can 
betray  him. 

In  front  of  the  Speaker's  table,  on  a  lower  desk  (not 
in  the  diagram),  used  by  the  clerks,  lies  a  huge  golden 
club.  It  is  the  mace, — a  substantive  historic  survival, 
and  the  outward  and  visible  symbol  of  the  power  of 
the  House.  When  the  House  goes  out  of  session  and 
sits  in  committee  of  the  whole  the  mace  is  removed 
and  slung  on  rests  under  the  table. 

Whenever  a  division  is  taken  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons the  members  are  all  told  off  bodily  by  a  most 
clumsy  proceeding,  a  custom  which  evidently  comes 
down  from  a  very  ancient  and  primitive  time.  All  the 
members  get  up  and  leave  the  floor,  deserting  the  cham- 


ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

her  absolutely.  They  are  literally  poured  out  into  a 
hall,  where  they  separate  themselves  into  two  lobbies, 
the  " ayes"  going  into  one  lobby  and  the  "noes7'  into 
another.  From  these  lobbies  they  file  out,  each  lobby 
pouring  out  its  contents  through  its  own  door  between 
a  pair  of  tellers.  The  vote  is  thus  counted,  and  there  is 
no  other  way  of  taking  it  if  the  yeas  and  nays  are  called 
for.  Calling  for  a  division,  therefore,  is  a  very  serious 
matter  in  the  way  of  delay.  Half  a  dozen  counts  may 
consume  a  whole  afternoon  or  evening  session,  especially 
if  any  of  the  members  choose  to  loiter  in  the  hall  or 
lobby. 

By  another  curious  formality,  whenever  a  division 
was  called  we  "  visitors  of  the  House"  were  removed 
from  our  private  dock  to  an  outer  chamber,  and  when 
the  ceremony  was  over  brought  back  again.  The 
reason  gravely  given  for  this  usage  is  "  lest  any  stranger 
might  get  mixed  with  the  members  and  counted/' 
During  one  night  I  went  out  thus  three  times  to  avoid 
the  danger  of  being  pressed  in  as  a  British  legislator. 

The  description  of  these  arrangements — the  ma- 
chinery of  the  House  of  Commons — has  consumed  so 
much  space,  that  I  postpone  to  another  letter  some  de- 
scription of  the  appearance  of  the  House  itself  and  of 
its  ways  and  modes  of  doing  business  as  compared  with 
ours. 

I  conclude  with  some  explanation  of  a  human  instru- 
ment of  machine  politics  which  we  do  not  have  on  our 
side  of  the  water,  in  just  the  same  shape,  at  least, — the 
"  whip." 

It  is  the  duty  of  the  "  whip"  to  see  that  the  neces- 
sary party  "  vote"  is  always  on  hand  in  case  it  should  be 
needed  either  to  carry  a  measure  or  to  prevent  an  ad- 
journment. An  adjournment  can  always  be  had  here 
if  there  are  less  than  forty  members  in  their  seats  and 
any  one  chooses  to  call  for  a  count. 

Jn  this  land,  where  parliamentary  attendance  is  so 


PARLIAMENT:    THE  HOUSE   OF  COMMONS.     H7 

very  negligent,  the  duty  of  the  "  whip"  is  no  light  one, 
and  requires  a  large  amount  of  tact,  knowledge  of  so- 
ciety and  the  different  social  relations  of  the  members, 
prudence,  judgment,  and  sagacity.  He  must  not  be 
nervous  and  detail  the  members  for  duty  when  they  are 
not  needed.  He  must  not  be  reckless  or  over-confident 
or  let  himself  be  misled  or  deceived  ou  the  other  hand, 
and  be  found  without  any  forces  when  the  vote  is 
called. 

Everything  over  here  if  once  tried  and  accepted  works 
itself  very  quickly  into  shape  and  becomes  an  institution. 
The  "  whip"  is  now  a  recognized  and  well-established 
cog-wheel  in  British  machine  politics.  He  is  always 
one  of  the  under-secretaries  of  the  treasury, — I  think, 
the  second  under-secretary.  His  real  work  is  not  the 
treasury  business,  of  course,  but  the  party  manage- 
ment and  engineering.  He  has  a  special  office-room  in 
the  Parliament  building,  one  of  the  treasury-rooms, 
fitted  up  for  his  particular  uses  and  work,  with  tele- 
graph, messengers,  clerks,  etc.  By  courtesy  the  whip 
of  the  Opposition  has  also  a  room  allowed  him  in  the 
building,  similarly  fitted  up,  to  do  his  party  work  in, 
which,  to  say  the  least,  is  very  generous  of  the  party 
in  power.  However,  the  taxes  of  the  people  pay  for 
both  the  rooms. 

When  the  Opposition  come  into  power  their  whip  is, 
by  now-established  usage,  entitled  to  the  post  in  the 
new  Ministry  of  second  under-secretary  of  the  treasury, 
and  thus  the  machine  works  smoothly  on. 

LONDON. 


138  ENGLISH  POLITIC 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

PARLIAMENT   (CONTINUED). 

HOUSE  OF  COMMONS — THE  WRITTEN  CONSTITUTION  AND  THE 
UNWRITTEN  CONSTITUTION — Two  SYSTEMS  OF  REPRESENTA- 
TION — THE  REPRESENTATION  OF  NUMBERS  AND  THE  REP- 
RESENTATION OF  INTEREST — NATIONAL  CONSTRUCTION  AND 
NATIONAL  GROWTH — SOCIETY  IN  PARLIAMENT. 

WHILE  the  English  Parliament  and  the  Congress  of 
the  United  States  are  fashioned  after  the  same  general 
shape, — the  former  serving,  in  fact,  as  the  model  of  the 
latter, — there  are  essential  and  fundamental  differences 
between  them  that  make  all  hasty  comparisons  mislead- 
ing and  render  the  study  and  practice  of  English  politics 
something  very  different  from  that  of  American  politics. 

Both  bodies  are  divided  into  two  Houses,  an  upper 
and  a  lower;  both  bodies  are  elective  (in  the  English 
Parliament  the  seats  of  the  English  peers  are  heredi- 
tary, but  the  Scotch  and  Irish  peers  are  elective) ;  both 
bodies  divide  the  work  in  much  the  same  way  between 
the  two  Houses,  the  lower  House  controlling  the  supplies. 
All  these  general  features  of  resemblance,  however, 
only  serve  to  hide  the  radical  differences  and  mislead 
the  superficial  observer. 

I  shall  endeavor  briefly,  in  a  running  parallel,  and  in 
the  simplest  language  possible,  to  point  out  the  funda- 
mental and  radical  divergencies  which  exist  between 
the  Governments  of  our  two  great  English-speaking 
countries,  as  administered  by  their  national  legislatures, 
and  to  show  in  passing  how  these  differences  illustrate 
themselves  on  the  floors  of  Parliament  and  Congress 
in  diverse  customs,  habits,  and  modes  of  procedure. 

To  begin  with,  the  controlling  organic  difference  be- 


PARLIAMENT-    THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS.     H9 

tween  the  two  nations  is  the  difference  between  a 
growth  and  a  construction.  This  difference  underlies 
everything, — government,  politics,  law,  social  structure, 
and  e very-day  habit  and  usage.  England  is  a  growth, 
— we  are  a  structure.  You  see  this  in  everything  you 
look  at  or  consider  here,  every  day  and  every  hour. 
And  wherever  there  is  a  difference  in  the  habits,  man- 
ners, or  customs  of  the  two  people  you  can  nearly  always 
trace  it  back  to  this  source  and  determine  it  by  this  as 
a  rule. 

First,  of  course,  this  comes  out  in  the  constitutions, 
— the  bottom  and  foundation  law  of  both  countries. 

We  all  know  that  ours  is  a  pure  construction,  a  plan 
traced  carefully  on  paper  by  political  draughtsmen  for 
the  use  of  political  architects.  We  know  that  every 
word  has  been  carefully  studied  and  every  clause  and 
sentence  thoughtfully  adjusted, — or  tried  to  be  adjusted. 
Every  word  is  plainly  written,  so  that  every  citizen  may 
know  it.  Many  of  them  have  been  made  the  subject 
of  legal  interpretation,— -even  the  punctuation  lias  been 
so  considered.  Our  Constitution  in  this  feature  of  ab- 
solute and  entire  construction  does  not  differ  from  a 
written  contract,  an  insurance  prospectus,  or  a  railway 
company's  charter. 

Our  own  Constitution  being  thus  rigidly  framed  and 
fixed  on  paper,  we  unconsciously  assume  that  all  others 
are  also.  We  hear  of  the  "  unwritten  Constitution" 
of  England  and  assent  to  it,  but  I  presume  the  average 
American,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  thinks  of  this  phrase 
loosely  as  a  figure  of  speech,  meaning  something, — he 
does  not  exactly  know  what. 

As  a  matter  of  literal  fact,  the  Constitution  of  Eng- 
land— the  fundamental  and  greatest  and  determining 
law  of  the  whole  country — is  absolutely  unwritten. 
Nor  is  it  anywhere  or  in  any  way  divided  into  chapters 
and  sections  and  division  of  topics,  as  ours.  Nor  is  it, 
of  course,  indexed.  It  is  a  vast  body  of  customs  and 
usages,  most  of  which  are  rights  which  have  grown  up, — 


120  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

rights  of  the  crown ;  rights  of  the  Chinch  and  of 
special  Churches;  rights  of  classes;  rights  of  Parlia- 
ment and  of  each  House ;  rights  x>f  persons ;  rights  of 
colleges,  village  vestries,  abbeys,  counties,  etc.,  etc.,  etc. 
In  the  chapter  of  this  volume  on  Westminster  Abbey 
there  is  noted  a  striking  illustration  of  one  of  these 
early  personal  usages  grown  into  a  right  of  national 
proportions. 

The  whole  body  of  these  rights  and  usages  which 
have  grown  up  from  year  to  year,  and  from  century  to 
century,  and  which  are  growing  yet,  is  the  English  Con- 
stitution. They  have  never  been  gathered  together, 
they  have  never  been  recorded  ;  some  of  them  have 
perhaps  never  been  definitely  reduced  to  rigid  words. 
No  one  in  England  would  do  all  this  for  them  if  he 
could,  and  no  one  could,  for  these  rights  and  usages  are 
living  things,  changing  and  growing  every  day,  just  as 
our  own  bodies  grow  by  constant  hourly  change. 

One  can  think  out  for  himself  how  this  needs  affect 
the  daily  life  and  work  of  the  courts  and  of  the  legisla- 
tures, and  of  the  politicians  and  the  statesmen,  and  how 
it  must  make  their  work  diverge  from  ours. 

While  the  English  House  of  Commons  and  our  House 
of  Representatives  are  both  elected  by  the  people,  they 
are  elected  in  an  entirely  different  way,  and  so  as  to 
represent  in  an  entirely  different  way  the  body  and  in- 
terests of  the  nation.  Here,  again,  it  is  growth  and 
construction. 

We  choose  our  representatives  to  represent  purely  the 
principle  of  numbers  or  population, — if  that  is  a  political 
principle  at  all, — each  male  over  twenty-one  years  of 
age,  and  not  convicted  of  infamous  crime,  be  he  good 
or  bad,  educated  or  uneducated,  cultivated  or  vulgar, 
with  property  or  without  property,  a  valuable  citizen 
or  a  worthless  citizen,  counting  one,  and  being  equally 
represented  in  an  infinitesimal  fraction  of  the  member  he 
sends  to  Congress.  We  represent  only  the  individual, 


PARLIAMENT:    THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS.     121 

not  what  he  is  or  may  have  been.  We  elect  our  repre- 
sentatives, too,  by  a  very  simple  and  easy  method,  and 
in  mathematical  proportion  to  the  numbers  of  the  pop- 
ulation, everything  accurately  "constructed,"  like  loga- 
rithms or  the  tables  of  a  life-insurance  company. 

The  English  system  of  representation,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  very  complex  and  very  involved,  like  the  un- 
folding leaves  of  bud  and  flower  and  tree.  It  is  a  growth, 
various  interests  and  classes  having  achieved  represen- 
tation from  time  to  time  as  they  have  forced  themselves 
forward  into  notice  and  power.  It  is  also  changing 
every  few  years, — growing.  It  could  not  begin  to  be 
described  in  detail  within  the  limits  of  a  letter,  being 
elaborate,  complicated,  and  not  in  any  way  reduced  to 
a  simple  rule,  as  ours.  There  are  features  in  it  which 
seem  to  us  to  work  great  inequalities, — at  least  if  we  take 
our  principle  of  numbers  to  be  the  true  one. 

The  great  difference  between  the  two  systems,  how- 
ever, may  be  stated  thus  :  That  while  we  represent  di- 
rectly only  the  individual,  the  English  system  undertakes 
to  represent  directly  a  large  number  of  the  higher  in- 
terests of  the  country.  The  voter  does  not  vote  merely 
as  an  individual,  but  for  what  he  is  worth  to  the  com- 
munity as  nearly  as  that  can  be  ascertained. 

For  instance,  education  is  represented  when  the  uni- 
versities send  members  to  Parliament ;  the  Church  is 
represented  when  the  bishops  sit  in  the  House  of  Peers ; 
classes  are  represented  in  the  same  way  ;  counties  are 
represented  when  they  send  members  as  counties ; 
boroughs  are  represented  when  they  send  members  as 
boroughs ;  and,  finally,  property  is  represented  in  the 
property  qualification,  nearly  always  attached,  of  the 
voter.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  too,  the  army  and  the  navy, 
great  and  important  institutions  and  interests  in  this 
country,  are  always  well  represented  on  the  floor  of  the 
House, — this  by  the  personal  choice  of  the  voters,  how- 
ever, and  not  by  any  direct  provision.  Labor  is  rep- 
resented also  in  the  towns  which  it  has  built  up, — 
j  11 


122  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

Manchester,   Leeds,    Birmingham, — and   which    send 
members  as  towns  and  not  by  reason  of  population. 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  members  of  Congress  and  the 
members  of  Parliament  go  to  Washington  and  West- 
minster in  a  very  different  way  and  represent  very 
different  things. 

The  duties  and  labors  of  the  English  Parliament  are 
very  vast  and  onerous  as  compared  with  those  of  the 
Congress  at  Washington.  Our  legislative  functions 
have  been  distributed  by  construction  to  the  State  gov- 
ernments and  other  bodies,  while  in  the  gradual  growth 
of  centuries  all  the  burdens  of  the  whole  nation,  and 
latterly  of  an  empire,  have  been  piled  up  on  Parlia- 
ment. Our  simple  distribution  of  legislative  functions 
is  familiar  to  every  one  at  home.  Parliament  does,  or 
undertakes  to  do,  everything.  It  debates  on  the  con- 
struction of  a  bridge  across  the  little  Thames  one  day, 
and  the  reconstruction  of  the  Indian  empire  or  the  con- 
duct of  a  foreign  war  or  the  peace  of  Europe  the  next. 
In  this  respect  the  machine  seems  to  have  broken  down 
at  present.  Everybody,  Conservative  leader  as  well  as 
Liberal,  admits  that  the  business  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons is  at  this  moment  hopelessly  in  arrears.  It  is  in 
the  condition  of  a  court  with  an  overburdened  docket, 
— back,  not  for  terms,  but,  as  is  variously  estimated, 
from  ten  to  fifty  years. 

All  these  great  differences — of  organic  law,  of  struc- 
ture, of  functions — show  themselves  clearly,  work 
themselves  down  in  the  appearance,  in  the  manners 
and  usages,  and  in  the  mode  of  proceeding  of  the  two 
great  Houses. 

When  you  first  look  over  the  House  of  Commons 
and  contrast  it  with  our  House  of  Representatives,  two 
things  strike  you  at  once.  You  see,  first,  that  the 
average  of  years  of  the  representative  is  higher  than 
with  us ;  and,  second,  you  find  a  larger  proportion  to 


PARLIAMENT:    THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS.     123 

the  membership  of  distinguished  men  than  with  us, — 
men  of  known  ability  as  soldiers,  statesmen,  thinkers, 
scholars. 

The  first  fact  is  simply  the  general  tendency  and 
result  of  a  more  highly  organized  and  mature  com- 
munity. We  send  older  men  from  Philadelphia  and 
Boston  than  from  the  Kickapoo  and  Oshkosh  and 
such-like  districts. 

The  second  fact — the  larger  presence  of  strong  men 
— is  directly  traceable  to  the  English  system  of  repre- 
sentation and  one  of  its  usages.  In  the  first  place,  the 
average  grade  of  the  voter  in  England  is  higher  than 
with  us,  which,  of  course,  raises  the  grade  of  the  rep- 
resentative. Under  the  system  prevailing  now,  the 
very  ignorant  man  or  the  man  without  any  property 
interest  in  his  country  at  all  (unless  he  have  a  high 
educational  qualification,  as  on  the  university  lists)  is 
pretty  surely  excluded  from  the  ballot-box.  No  Tam- 
many legions  can  be  marshalled  and  marched  to  the 
polls  here;  and  that  is  the  reason,  perhaps,  why  t hex- 
march  in  New  York  rather  than  in  London  or  Dublin. 

Then  it  is  the  happy  usage  of  an  English  constitu- 
ency to  select  for  their  representative  the  ablest  and 
most  distinguished  man  they  can  get  in  their  kingdom, 
whether  he  is  born  inside  the  parish  linos  of  the  district 
or  out  of  them.  They  want  to  be  represented,  not  to 
satisfy  the  claims  of  Little  Peddlington  or  this  or  that 
cross-roads  section.  For  instance,  in  1865,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone was  returned  from  South  Lancashire,  and  while 
serving  for  that  district  became  the  leader  of  the 
Liberal  party,  succeeding  Palmerston.  In  1868,  South 
Lancashire  failed  to  re-elect  him.  He  was  not  lost,  hoxv- 
ever,  either  to  England  or  to  the  party.  Greenwich 
immediately  asked  the  honor  of  his  candidacy,  returned 
him,  and  in  December,  1868,  he  was  prime  minister 
of  England.  In  our  country  the  xvhole  nation  xxrould 
have  suffered  for  the  ignorance  of  South  Lancashire. 
Again,  the  Marquis  of  Harrington,  the  new  leader  of 


124  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

the  Liberals,  at  the  recent  election,  stood  in  a  different 
borough  from  that  which  sent  him  to  the  previous  Par- 
liament. 

This  judicious  "selection  of  the  fittest"  can  be  made 
in  Pennsylvania  under  our  laws,  but  it  is  not  the  cus- 
tom, and  the  petty  feeling  of  local  prejudice  is  against 
ft.  The  wildest  and  most  barren  and  meagrely  edu- 
cated district  in  our  mountains  can  send  the  most  dis- 
tinguished lawyer  or  scholar  of  Philadelphia  to  repre- 
sent them  in  Congress  if  they  want.  Had  Thaddeus 
Stevens  been  rejected  by  Lancaster,  the  Chester  or  the 
Bradford  or  any  other  strong  Republican  district  could 
have  sent  him  if  they  had  wanted  to;  but  I  suppose 
they  would  rather  have  left  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives in  the  crisis  of  war  without  its  great  leader  than 
to  have  done  so. 

Another  incidental  feature  of  the  House  which 
immediately  strikes  an  American  is  the  number  of 
dress-suits  scattered  over  the  room, — the  men  who  have 
been  to  dinner  or  are  going;  for  "society"  here  is 
always  distinctly  represented  in  Parliament.  I  sup- 
pose we  might  say  that  in  our  country  it  is  not  only 
not  represented  in  Congress,  but  positively  excluded 
and  disfranchised.  Here,  however,  politics  is  really 
fashionable. 

The  differences  of  home  structure  explain  this  diver- 
gency again.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  loose  talk  about 
the  duty  of  American  gentlemen  going  into  politics, 
and  the  example  of  English  gentlemen  devoting  their 
lives  and  energies  to  political  work  is  held  up  as  a 
conclusive  argument.  Of  course,  they  should,  as  a  duty, 
but  there  is  no  incentive  outside  of  that.  There  is  no 
analogy  at  all  between  the  two  cases.  The  English  gen- 
tleman goes  into  politics  because  he  has  his  class  inter- 
ests at  stake  and  must  defend  them.  His  lands  depend 
on  the  stability  of  the  present  laws,  and  he  must  sup- 
port them.  He  is  "  holding  the  fort"  of  his  position. 

Moreover,  he  has  a  distinct  representation  in  Parlia- 


PARLIAMENT:    THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS.     125 

ment, — his  position,  his  class,  his  education,  his  prop- 
erty,— while  with  us  nothing  is  represented  but  the 
individual, — his  existence  as  a  unit  of  population. 
Under  the  English  system  not  only  has  "the  indi- 
vidual" a  certain  representation,  but  also  all  that  he 
has  been  able  to  add  to  himself  of  moral  or  intellectual 
worth,  or  even  material  wealth.  The  American  gen- 
tleman in  politics,  on  the  contrary,  has  only  the  same 
quality  and  force  as  the  American  blackguard, — one 
vote.  The  American  scholar  in  politics  has  only  the 
same  quality  and  force  as  the  American  hoodlum — one 
vote.  The  American  millionaire  in  politics  has  only 
the  same  quality  and  force  as  the  American  communist 
— one  vote. 

The  bottom  reason  why  the  American  gentleman, 
the  American  scholar,  the  American  property-holder, 
do  not  go  into  politics,  and  are  so  infrequently  seen  in 
Washington,  is  because  education,  cultivation,  and  prop- 
erty as  such  are  not  represented  in  our  suffrage  system, 
and  there  is  no  constituency,  therefore,  to  send  these 
men.  We  represent  only  the  "  individual,"  and,  con- 
sequently, as  a  rule,  "  individuals"  go  into  politics,  and 
"individuals"  are  sent  to  Washington. 

The  dress-coats,  I  may  mention  in  concluding,  are 
this  year  mainly  on  the  Government  side,  although  the 
Marquis  of  Hartington,  the  leader  of  the  Opposition, 
frequently  addresses  the  House  in  full  dinner-costume. 
Still,  Liberalism  in  some  way  seems  to  tend  strongly  to 
sack-coats  and  felt  hats  and  ready-made  clothing. 

LONDON. 


11* 


126  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

CHAPTER  XV. 

PARLIAMENT  (CONTINUED). 

HOUSE  OF  COMMONS — THE  CRIES  OF  PARLIAMENT — THE  SCHOOL- 
BOY IN  PARLIAMENT — FAIR  PLAY— INDIVIDUAL  INDEPEND- 
ENCE— ETIQUETTE  OF  THE  FLOOR — THE  SPEAKER  OF  THE 
HOUSE — "  POLITICIAN"  OR  "  STATESMAN" — DIGNITY  OF  THE 
HOUSE — DECLINE  OF  ORATORY — SPEAKING  IN  THE  HOUSE 
OF  COMMONS — CICERO  ON  THE  TREASURY  BENCH — THE 
AGENT. 

I  HAVE  mentioned  the  school-boy  atmosphere  which 
often  marks  the  House  of  Commons. 

English  life,  or  at  least  the  life  of  the  upper,  and  so 
far  controlling,  classes,  begins  at  the  public  schools — of 
which  Eton  and  Rugby  are  examples  familiar  to  us — 
and  receives  there  an  impress  which  never  leaves  it. 
Looking  over  the  floor  of  either  House  of  Parliament, 
you  can  see  there  the  Eton  boy  and  the  university  man 
all  the  time.  They  are  the  foundation  of  English  pub- 
lic life,  not  merely  intellectual,  but  moral. 

There  is  no  more  forcible  illustration  of  the  surviving 
force  of  this  boy-education  than  the  cries  of  Parliament, 
which  sound  so  strangely  to  a  foreigner,  but  which  he 
soon  sees  are  a  real  part  of  the  process  of  legislation, 
just  as  regular  and  just  as  effective  as  the  speech- 
making.  Sometimes  I  thought  them  more  so.  These 
cries,  so  unusual  to  our  ears,  are  a  kind  of  low  inter- 
mittent chorus  with  which  the  house  at 'times  accompa- 
nies the  speaker,  each  political  section,  "  right"  and 
"  left,"  "  right  above  the  gangway,"  "  left  above  the 
gangway,"  etc.,  bearing  its  part.  Unlike  the  Greek 
chorus,  this  accompaniment  is  not  used  to  explain  the 
plot  of  the  speaker,  but  it  does  serve  admirably  to  ex- 
plain the  effect  of  the  speech  on  the  audience  and  on 


PARLIAMENT:    THE  HOUSE   OF  COMMONS.     127 

each  part  of  it.  Usually,  of  course,  these  cries  are 
confined  to  staccato  explosions  of  dissent  or  approba- 
tion at  the  ends  of  sentences  or  at  the  point  of  some 
startling  facts  or  figures.  Sometimes,  however,  a 
speaker  is  accompanied  from  beginning  to  end  with  a 
kind  of  monotonous  chant,  rising,  swelling,  or  sinking 
from  time  to  time  and  sung  in  two  or  more  parts.  Mr. 
Edward  Jenkins,  who  is  especially  distasteful  to  the 
Conservatives,  generally  speaks  to  music  of  this  kind. 

These  cries  are  exactly  such  as  might  be  heard  from 
a  school-room  of  boys  anxious  to  put  down  a  speaker, 
who  by  a  natural  reaction  is  supported  in  his  turn  by 
his  friends,  who  come  up  to  his  aid  with  an  opposing 
volume  of  sounds.  Singularly  enough,  these  sounds 
are  often — generally,  I  think — given  more  or  less  fur- 
tively. You  see  before  you  a  body  of  dignified,  rather 
elderly  gentlemen  ;  you  know  them  to  be  perhaps  the 
strongest  legislative  body  in  the  world  ;  you  see  among 
them  some  of  the  greatest  thinkers,  writers,  and  states- 
men of  the  time;  you  recognize  some  of  England's  no- 
blemen of  high  rank  ;  some  gallant  oi  fleers  of  her  annv, 
perhaps  an  admiral,  too,  or  distinguished  author;  sud- 
denly you  hear  a  low,  rising  swell  of  sound  that  carries 
you  back  to  your  callow  days  of  spelling-books  and  pop- 
corn and  mint-stick  candy, — O-o-o-o-o-h  ;  Ou-oo-oo-oo ; 
Ah-a-a-a;  Whoo- \vhoo-\vh  ;  Eeh-eeh-eeh-eh  ;  Boo- 
oo-oo;  Err-r-r-r;  Oh-ah-ooh-bah  ;  Urnm-m-m-m-m; 
Ay-ay-ay, — all  the  vowel-sounds  of  the  alphabet  with 
every  conceivable  intonation  and  form  of  expression. 
It  is  these  old  gentlemen  assisting  in  the  making  of  a 
law  of  England. 

Watching  closer,  you  will  see,  perhaps,  a  nervous 
sexagenarian  member  sitting  squarely  up  in  his  seat 
and  looking  straight  into  the  eyes  of  the  speaker  with  a 
severely-dissenting  frown.  His  stern,  grave  features 
never  move,  but  from  his  open  mouth  your  ears  detect 
a  steadily-flowing  stream  of  guttural  bass.  Another 
one  intones  openly  his  chant  of  derision  or  dissent. 


128  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

You  see  hats  go  up  before  mouths,  heads  turned  away, 
a  legislator  or  two  suspiciously  close  behind  a  column, 
and  other  venerable  but  franker  old  gentlemen  in  boy- 
ish abandon  giving  way  openly  to  the  jollities  of  the 
hour.  Then  up  from  the  other  side  comes  a  counter- 
wave,  bearing  on  its  swell  the  sense  of  injury  and  a 
protest, — indignation  and  the  determination  to  stand  by 
its  spokesman ;  and  so  this  battle,  which  is  not  on 
"  the  order  of  the  day,"  and  which  is  not  recorded  in 
the  next  morning's  papers,  wages  from  night  to  night. 

Some  members,  by  practice  and  experience,  perhaps 
by  constitutional  adaptation  or  perhaps  from  having 
worked  hard  at  school,  attain  great  proficiency  and 
ability  in  this  mode  of  parliamentary  tactics.  One 
evening  two  portly  old  legislators  with  broad,  cheery 
faces,  white  whiskers,  and  generally  a  fine,  responsible, 
conservative  air,  who  sat  for  the  moment  on  the  bench 
just  in  front  of  mine,  opened  fire  at  the  same  time, 
evidently  by  preconcert.  Not  a  feature  moved  ;  their 
lips  were  just  apart  and  apparently  in  rest;  the  bland, 
kindly  expression  of  countenance  never  changed,  but 
from  these  stout,  smooth-shaven  throats  a  strong  volume 
of  derisive  sound  flowed  steadily  and  in  smooth  cur- 
rent, without  a  waver  or  break,  for  at  least  some  min- 
utes, a  chorus  sufficient  to  disconcert  a  pretty  self-reliant 
speaker,  the  more  so  from  its  being  so  well  masked 
and  conveying  a  mysterious  opposition. 

The  custom  has  some  practical  uses.  Although  the 
sounds  are  mostly  simple  vowel-notes,  you  soon  learn 
to  understand  their  meaning,  and  are  able  to  mark  the 
immediate  effect  of  a  speech  in  all  parts  of  the  house. 
It  is,  in  fact,  an  almost  instantaneous  and  continuous 
vote,  enabling  the  speaker  and  his  friends  or  foes  to 
follow  the  effect  of  his  argument  from  moment  to  mo- 
ment. Where  there  is  a  political  topography  of  the 
floor,  and  the  House  sits  in  party  platoons,  as  it  does 
here,  the  feeling  and  condition  of  the  body  at  any  given 
moment  are  very  clearly  traceable  in  this  way. 


PARLIAMENT:    THE   HOUSE  OF  COMMONS.     129 

While  these  school-room  cries  are  rather  a  boyish 
kind  of  warfare,  they  are  generally  used  with  a  boy's 
sense  of  candor,  fair  dealing,  and  fair  play.  They  seem 
to  be  largely  the  spontaneous  utterance  of  individual 
opinion,  and  not  a  mere  partisan  game,  directed  and 
organized.  The  cry  "Oh!"  is  the  general  note  used 
to  express  derision,  disapprobation,  and  opposition; 
"  Hear  !"  to  express  support,  sympathy,  or  to  call  es- 
pecial attention  to  any  fact  or  opinion.  "  Hear  !"  might 
be  called  a  kind  of  emphasis  underlining  contributed 
by  the  audience.  It  is  also  used  ironically  at  times. 
The  several  cries  frequently  greeted  a  speaker  from  all 
sections  of  the  house  at  one  time,  showing  that  they 
were  individual  and  not  mere  responses.  I  have  more 
than  once  seen  a  member  while  speaking  applauded 
from  the  opposite  side  of  the  house,  and  I  have  also 
seen  derisive  cries  on  either  side  silenced  by  counter 
cries  from  the  same  side. 

This  sense  of  fairness  on  the  floor  of  Parliament, 
and  aversion  to  partisan  tactics,  is  a  marked  feature. 
The  individual  legislator  has  full  freedom,  and  he  is 
often  allowed  even  to  abuse  it  rather  than  that  the  right 
of  free  speech  should  suffer  in  his  person.  There  is  no 
"  previous  question"  in  the  House  in  the  sense  of  our 
rule,  and  I  have  heard  members  talk  platitudes  far  into 
the  morning  and  repeat  each  other  wearily  without  re- 
buke or  remonstrance,  although  the  floor  must  have  had 
its  patience  well  worn  out.  Certainly  the  foreign  visit- 
ors had.  The  chairman,  too,  allows  the  widest  latitude 
in  speaking  to  the  question.  This  generous  worship  of 
fair  play  will  be  recognized  as  a  well-known  British 
school-boy  trait. 

I  never  saw  it  violated  in  the  House  save  on  an  oc- 
casion when  Mr.  Edward  Jenkins  arose  to  speak  on  the 
"  flogging-in-the-army"  debate.  Then  the  entire  Con- 
servative side — gray  whiskers,  bald-heads,  dress-suits, 
army  and  navy  officers,  lords,  statesmen,  white  hairs 
and  all — set  up  a  concerted  symphony  of  disturbance 


130  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

entirely  drowning  his  voice.  Mr.  Jenkins  faced  the  in- 
decorous storm  with  great  composure,  speaking  for  four 
or  five  minutes, — the  usual  length  of  the  speeches  then 
being  made, — although  he  was  entirely  unheard  from 
beginning  to  end,  an  occasional  detached  word,  sentences 
apart,  being  the  only  sound  intelligible.  His  compo- 
sure, as  I  afterwards  learned,  was  perhaps  like  that  of 
the  eels  which  got  used  to  be  skinned,  as  he  for  some 
time  past  has  always  spoken  under  such  circumstances. 
This  gentleman,  better  known  in  the  United  States  as 
"  Ginx's  Baby,"  has  made  himself  especially  obnoxious 
to  the  Conservatives,  who  allege  that  his  assaults  on  the 
Government  and  its  officials  have  been  ungentlemanly 
and  offensive,  and  placed  him  outside  of  the  pale  of  gen- 
tlemen. Mr.  Jenkins's  friends,  on  the  other  hand,  claim 
that  all  his  movements  have  been  legitimate  and  neces- 
sary ;  that  some  of  the  abuses  of  English  administra- 
tion are  so  involved  with  vested  interests  and  hereditary 
claims  that  it  is  impossible  to  attack  them  without  seem- 
ing to  become  personal.  The  question  is  therefore  a 
debatable  one  inside  of  the  House,  and  this  treatment  of 
Mr.  Jenkins  to  an  American  view  appears  indefensible 
and  hardly  worthy  of  a  great  party.  It  is,  in  a  sense, 
however,  a  strong  tribute  to  Mr.  Jenkins's  power,  as  it 
proves  that  he  has  struck  a  blow  or  blows  somewhere 
where  they  have  hurt. 

The  sibilant  "  hiss"  of  popular  assemblies  is,  I  be- 
lieve, used  very  little  or  not  at  all  in  Parliament.  I  do 
not  recall  hearing  it. 

In  addition  to  this  admonitory  refrain  of  dissent  or 
assent,  members  are  constantly  subjected  to  another 
species  of  boyish  training  by  "  calls."  Does  a  speaker 
indulge  in  some  loose  assertion,  some  wild  generalization 
or  inexact  statement  of  fact,  he  is  immediately  reined 
up  with  sharp  calls  of  "Date?"  "Date?"  "Name?" 
"  Name  ?"  "  When  ?"  "  Where  ?"  "  Time  ?"  "  Place  ?" 
«  Year  ?"  "  Day  ?"  or  positive  cries  of  "  No !"  "  No !" 


PARLIAMENT:   THE  HOUSE   OF  COMMONS.     131 

if  any  one  wishes  to  personally  traverse  his  allegations. 
The  educational  influence  of  this  usage  is  very  great 
and  very  valuable.  Careless  declamation,  vague  rhet- 
oric, cowardly  innuendo,  rapidly  shrink  under  this  treat- 
ment. There  is  little  speaking  for  effect  in  the  House 
of  Commons :  a  man  must  speak  to  the  facts.  There 
is  no  chance,  either,  under  this  rule  of  indulging  in  the 
unmanly  habit  of  making  loose  and  sweeping  charges 
in  the  expectation  that  they  will  go  to  the  country  un- 
answered and  do  their  work  before  an  answer  can  come. 
Nor  is  it  possible,  under  this  regimen,  to  make  foolish 
.speeches  and  vainglorious  threats  to  be  read  at  home  by 
your  constituency,  safe  in  the  sure  knowledge  that  none 
of  your  fellow-members  will  be  silly  enough  to  notice 
them.  In  short,  in  these  respects  the  floor  of  the  House 
of  Commons  is  very  much  like  a  ring  in  a  boys'  school- 
ground.  Any  boy  may  fight  in  it,  but  he  must  strike 
fair. 

It  need  hardly  be  added  that  these  habits  conduce  tc 
the  habitual  display  of  great  personal  independence  on 
the  part  of  the  members.  The  personal  independence 
of  the  English  politician,  his  ready  assertion  of  his  in- 
dividuality, is  a  marked  fact  which  soon  strikes  the 
political  observer  from  America  accustomed  to  the 
ready  subserviency  and  machine  drill  of  our  own  men 
of  this  class.  The  English  political  leader  starts,  as  a 
rule,  with  social  position,  education,  and  an  inherited  in- 
come. He  is  not  dependent  on  his  political  exertions, 
therefore,  either  for  his  standing  in  his  community  or 
for  his  means  of  livelihood,  and  has,  besides,  social  and 
intellectual  resources  within  himself  which  preclude  the 
need  of  his  seeking  occupation  or  mental  activity  in 
politics.  Fortunate  thus  in  his  triple  armor,  he  need 
never  sacrifice  his  individual  opinions  or  his  self-respect 
under  the  coercion  of  circumstances.  So  far,  happily 
for  England,  the  professional  politician — the  man  who 
makes  his  living  by  politics — has  not  appeared,  but  I 
fear,  with  the  social  transition  in  progress,  he  is  com  ing. 


132  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

There  are,  of  course,  men  who  will  cringe  and  crawl 
under  any  circumstances,  and  England  has  her  share 
of  them,  but  as  a  class  her  public  men  are  inde- 
pendent and  courageous  in  the  expression  of  individual 
opinion  to  an  extent  which  contrasts  most  happily  with 
the  sad  reverse  in  our  own  country.  They  are  so  by 
reason  of  their  education  and  assured  social  position. 
I  heard  the  Marquis  of  Hartington,  the  Liberal  leader, 
one  night  in  the  House,  and  from  the  leaders'  bench, 
make  a  speech  disclaiming  and  rebuking  the  action  of 
a  section  of  his  party  which  I  feel  sure  no  leader  in  our 
House  would  dare  to  make.  And  it  created  no  especial 
surprise  or  commotion  here.  It  seemed  to  be  expected 
that  Lord  Hartington  would  do  it, — that  he  owed  it  to 
himself.  He  owed  it  as  a  leader.  With  us,  unfortu- 
nately, the  leadership  of  a  party  too  often  consists  in  the 
collective  sense  of  the  average  and  commonplace  ma- 
jority of  its  membership. 

There  is  much  about  the  landed  system  of  Great 
Britain — the  "  great-families"  system,  based  on  primo- 
geniture and  entail — which  a  republican  cannot  but 
consider  bad  for  the  state  and  for  the  human  indi- 
vidual, but  this  great  tribute  must  be  paid  to  it, — that 
it  does  secure  independent  and  educated  politicians  for 
the  administration  of  the  affairs  of  state.  The  syco- 
phancy of  England  so  far  is  social  rather  than  political, 
and  as  such  comparatively  harmless  to  the  state. 

In  fact,  the  very  use  of  words  shows  the  difference 
in  the  moral  grade  of  the  two  countries  on  this  point. 
"  Politician,"  a  depreciated  word  with  us,  is  here  an 
honorable  one.  It  means  here  about  what  "statesman" 
means  with  us  in  the  popular  acceptation  and  use, — i.e., 
one  who  administers  public  affairs  as  a  trust.  Uncon- 
sciously, with  us  politician  has  come  to  mean  one  who 
is  working  for  his  own  personal  ends,  and  we  seek  in 
the  word  statesman  to  express  some  higher  conception. 
People  may  not  consciously  acknowledge  this,  but  I 
believe  any  fair  man  will  admit  that  when  it  is  ordi- 


PARLIAMENT:    THE  HOUSE   OF  COMMONS.     133 

narily  said  of  any  one  in  our  land,  "  X  is  going  into 
politics,"  it  means  that  "X"  is  beginning  to  look  for 
personal  political  employment.  Politics  means  work- 
ing for  office.  Statesmanship  means  government  or 
the  administration  of  the  public  interests.  Now,  the 
English  popular  mind  does  not  so  degrade  its  political 
men  as  yet.  Politics  means,  in  popular  acceptation, 
the  administration  of  the  affairs  of  state,  and  politicians 
the  men  who  administer  them. 

In  fact,  the  popular  sense  of  propriety  does  not 
admit  that  a  politician — a  member  of  the  House,  for 
instance — should  busy  himself  about  his  election.  The 
machinery  of  election,  the  science  of  elections,  are 
something  below  the  legislator,  and  which  he  must  not 
touch.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  many  members  of 
Parliament  do  not  busy  themselves  most  earnestly 
about  their  elections  and  watch  with  most  efficient  care1 
the  whole  process,  but  they  must  do  it  within-doors, 
with  carefully-concealed  hand,  and  not  ostentatiously 
and  so  as  to  offend  the  conventional  and  traditional 
feeling  of  their  constituency  in  this  matter.  Votes, 
voting,  and  the  active  direction  of  the  canvass  must 
be  left  to  "  the  agent." 

While  the  beggarly  seating  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, its  boyish  cries,  and  the  wearing  of  hats  by  the 
members  give  an  undignified  and  almost  indecorous 
air  to  its  exterior,  it  is  at  bottom  a  most  dignified  and 
substantial  body.  The  sense  of  the  House  of  its  own 
dignity  is  something  far  surpassing  anything  of  the 
kind  known  in  our  Congress.  It  is  an  historic  evolu- 
tion. The  House  of  Commons  represents,  and  means, 
and  is,  "  the  people  of  England."  It  never  forgets  that. 
Every  privilege  it  has  has  been  wrested  from  reluctant 
power.  They  have  come  at  long  intervals, — generations 
apart.  Many  of  them  have  been  paid  for  with  blood, 
offered  on  the  scaffold  and  shed  in  battle.  Many  of 
them  have  cost  life  and  property,  long  years  of  merci- 

12 


134  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

less  imprisonment,  and  cruel  confiscation.  No  wonder 
that  this  treasure,  this  trust  for  the  nation,  is  so  sacredly 
and  jealously  guarded.  Every  offence  against  the 
dignity  of  the  House  from  without  or  within  is  an 
assault  on  the  liberties  of  England.  Hence  the  ex- 
treme sensitiveness  of  the  Englishman  to  the  rights  of 
the  House,  and  the  honest  feeling  that  an  attempt  to 
coerce  or  bribe  a  member  is  the  highest  kind  of  treason 
to  the  people.  For  instance,  this  month  a  citizen,  a 
lawyer-lobbyist,  was  committed  to  the  tower  of  West- 
minster by  Parliament  for  merely  saying  that  he  could 
influence  a  parliamentary  committee.  It  was  generally 
admitted  that  he  did  not  believe  that  he  could  do  so, 
and  that  he  lied  to  his  client  when  he  said  so,  but  Par- 
liament considered  its  honor  involved  by  such  a  state- 
ment even  from  a  comparatively  irresponsible  man, 
and  he  went  to  prison  by  a  unanimous  vote  of  the 
House,  the  leaders  of  both  parties  vying  with  one 
another  to  punish  the  impertinent  falsehood.  I  was 
present  when  the  motion  for  commitment  was  made. 
The  facts  having  been  established  by  a  report  of  a 
select  committee,  there  was  no  debate  at  all,  the 
House  seeming  to  disdain  to  soil  its  hands  with  such  a 
discussion,  and  the  whole  affair  was  a  matter  of  only  a 
few  moments. 

In  previous  letters  I  noted  several  traditional  usages 
and  observances  which  illustrate  how  zealously,  even 
in  petty  things,  the  House  guards  its  dignity  and 
privileges. 

There  are  also  some  habits  and  traditional  formulae 
of  speech  which,  although  seemingly  of  small  moment 
in  themselves,  act  as  efficient  mechanical  aids  in  pre- 
serving the  dignity  of  official  or  political  intercourse. 
Names  are  never  used.  One  member  always  speaks 
of  another  as  "the  honorable  gentleman  and  member 

from ."  This  is  inexorable,  and  is  only  the  first 

step.  All  members  are  "  honorable  gentlemen,"  and 
must  be  addressed  as  such.  If  they  are  or  have  been 


PARLIAMENT:    THE    HOUSE  OF  COMMONS.     135 

in  the  Ministry,  they  must  be  addressed  as  "the  right 
honorable  gentlemen."  If  a  member  is  also  a  lawyer, 
he  must  be  addressed  as  "  the  honorable  and  learned 
gentleman."  If  he  has  served  in  the  army  or  navy,  he 
is  addressed  as  "the  honorable  and  gallant  gentleman." 
If  he  is,  further,  a  peer,  he  is  to  be  addressed  as  "the 
honorable  gentleman"  or  "  right  honorable  gentleman 
juul  noble  lord,"  or  "  most  noble  lord"  if  his  rank  is 
high  enough.  A  member  may  readily  be  a  "right 
honorable  and  gallant  gentleman  and  noble  lord,"  and, 
if  he  is,  must  be  so  addressed  every  time  he  is  spoken 
to  or  of  on  the  floor. 

This  ii.snge,  although  a  mechanical  form,  acts  as  an 
effectual  barrier  to  indecorous  or  impertinent  familiarity 
or  to  bad  man  tiers,  which  may  be  unintentional,  the 
unfortunate  heritage  of  early  vulgarity.  It  would  be 
impossible,  for  instance,  under  this  rule  for  one  states- 
man to  speak  of  another  as  Johnny  Sherman,  or  Andy 
Johnson,  or  Abe  Lincoln,  or  Tom  Corwin,  or  Zich 
Chandler.  The  habits  of  good  society  thus  acquired 
in  the  House,  if  not  attained  before,  are  carried  on  to 
the  stump, — or  hustings,  as  they  say  here, — where  the 
language  of  the  speakers  is,  with  rare  exceptions,  that 
of  gentlemen. 

Every  idea  in  England  must  have  .a  personal  em- 
bodiment or  conception.  She  is  much  nearer  the  "idol" 
stage  of  thought  than  we.  She  believes  in  a  personal 
sovereign  as  necessary  to  localize  and  animate  the  na- 
tional sense  of  loyalty.  This  sovereign,  too,  must  have 
a  golden  crown  and  a  sceptre  like  any  monarch  in 
Afghanistan  or  Persia  or  Zu Inland  or  the  fifth  cen- 
tury. She  believes  that  her  judges  need  robes  and  wigs 
to  express  the  majesty  of  the  law,  invisible  here,  but 
which  is  so  clearly  visible  in  the  pine-table  court- rooms 
of  the  backwoods  of  Pennsylvania  and  Minnesota. 

So  the  power  and  dignity  and  authority  of  the  H<  use 
of  Commons  centre  in  the  person  of  the  Speaker.  He 


136  ENGLISH   POLITICS, 

sums  up  in  his  official  presence  centuries  of  history. 
And  in  this  case  there  is  a  dramatic  and  historical  pro- 
priety in  the  political  nimbus  which  encircles  his  figure1. 
He  it  was  that  for  hundreds  of  years  was  first  arrested 
when  the  crown  moved  against  the  people  of  England. 
He  it  was  who  rotted  in  the  dungeon  and  died  on  the 
scaffold.  And  he  represents  to-day  a  popular  strength 
and  is  looked  up  to  with  a  respect  and  kind  of  loyalty 
which  in  no  way  attaches  to  the  office  in  our  country. 

His  authority  inside  the  House  is  correspondingly 
respected.  His  slightest  movement  seemed  to  command 
attention  and  respect.  The  rude  accessory  of  the  ham- 
mer is  entirely  unneeded.  I  listened  to  one  debate 
which  Englishmen  of  long  parliamentary  experience 
seemed  to  think  almost  unprecedented  in  its  heat  and 
disorder,  and  one  distinguished  member  frankly  ex- 
pressed his  mortification  that  I  should  witness  the  same 
and  carry  it  away  as  an  impression  of  the  British 
Parliament.  Feeling  certainly  ran  high,  although 
the  language  was  always  guarded  and,  compared  with 
our  legislative  emeutes,  moderate.  The  Irish  members, 
however,  were  openly  engaged  in  the  work  of  "  ob- 
struction," and,  with  their  English  friends  ai'ding  and 
abetting,  the  night  was  far  spent,  and  the  situation  was 
unquestionably  trying.  The  speaking  was  brief,  but 
quick  and  spirited,  and  the  floor  always  contested,  half 
a  dozen  or  more  members  often  striving  for  it  at  once. 
In  all  this  evening  the  Speaker's  decisions — which  were 
manifestly  impartial  and  honest — were  never  contested, 
and  when  a  surge  of  feeling  or  cries  seemed  about  to 
overwhelm  the  room  and  sweep  away  everything,  a 
simple  wave  of  his  hand  without  moving  from  his  seat 
instantly  calmed  the  rising  storm  and  restored  tran- 
quillity and  order.  The  noisy  pounding  of  a  hammer 
or  the  frantic  ringing  of  a  bell,  as  in  Italy  or  France, 
would  be  resented  in  Westminster. 

The  Speaker,  Mr.  Brand,  it  is  fair  to  say,  is,  however, 
an  exceptionably  able  man.  He  is  a  Liberal,  and  his 


PARLIAMENT:    THE  HOUSE   OF  COMMONS.     137 

discharge  of  his  office  under  the  former  administration 
was  so  acceptable  and  satisfactory  that  he  was  re-elected 
to  his  position  by  the  new  Conservative  House, — by  a 
unanimous  vote,  in  fact,  I  think.  This  evidences  a 
very  marked  contrast  between  politics  in  England  and 
America. 

The  salary  of  the  Speaker  of  the  House  is  £5000, 
about  $25,000.  The  members  receive  no  salary  for 
their  services,  or  compensation  of  any  kind  in  money. 

There  is  no  system  of  standing  'committees  in  the 
House,  as  with  us,  nor  is  there  any  call  of  the  previous 
question,  in  the  sense  of  our  use  of  it. 

The  most  marked  difference,  however,  by  all  odds 
between  the  legislatures  of  the  two  countries  is  in  the 
style  of  speaking  and  general  conduct  of  business, — the 
demonstrative  "oration"  on  our  side  and  the  quiet, 
business-like  statement  of  a  few  sentences  here.  It  is 
commonly  known,  I  suppose,  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  "  oratory"  in  Parliament,  in  either  House. 
No  member  ever  "makes  a  speech"  in  the  conventional 
sense  of  that  phrase,  as  known  with  us.  Some  of  the 
usages  I  have  described  are  clearly  incompatible  with 
the  traditional  custom  of  forensic  declamation  or  pomp- 
ous and  pretentious  argument,  and  are  sufficient  to  ac- 
count for  its  absence.  Many  writers  ascribe  the  death 
of  oratory  in  the  House  to  the  uncomfortable  benches 
and  limited  accommodations, — a  clearly  superficial  and 
thoughtless  view,  as  in  the  palmy  oratorical  days  of 
Pitt  and  Burke  the  accommodations  were  no  better,  and 
most  likely  worse,  especially  in  the  auxiliary  point  of 
retiring-rooms,  wash-rooms,  closets,  etc. 

The  cause  of  the  decline  of  forensic  declamation  is 
deeper  and  historical.  The  days  of  the  Pitts  and  of 
Fox  and  of  Burke  are  gone  forever  in  England,  be- 
cause she  is  too  far  advanced  in  thought  and  education, 
Impassioned  oratory,  I  take  it,  is  an  ingredient  of  im- 
mature civilization  and  dies  before  a  higher  condition 

12* 


138  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

of  general  education.  Demosthenes  was  possible  only 
under  the  crude  and  simple  conditions  of  Greek  society. 
Cicero  and  the  brilliant  school  of  contemporary  orators 
were  the  product  of  a  slavocratic  republic,  where  the 
mass  of  the  people  were  unlearned  and  untaught. 
Chrysostom  spoke  to  congregations  of  Christian  con- 
verts densely  ignorant  and  rude  in  their  manners,  as 
his  own  reproofs  of  them  show.  When  Bossuet  and 
Bourdeloue  swayed  all  France  with  emotion  and  pas- 
sion, common  France  was  in  a  state  of  mental  and  re- 
ligious tutelage.  England,  when  she  was  proud  of 
Pitt  and  Fox  and  Burke,  had  a  class  of  country  gen- 
tlemen she  will  never  be  proud  of  as  men  of  intelli- 
gence and  intellectual  calibre,  whatever  else  may  have 
been  their  merits.  Even  Clay  and  Webster  represent 
a  very  crude  and  provisional  stage  of  civilization  in  our 
own  country,  while  Patrick  Henry  and  the  Revolution- 
ary orators  were  the  outcome  of  our  cradle-hours.  The 
rule  holds  good  in  the  United  States  even  at  this  mo- 
ment. Wherever  civilization  is  highest  and  scholarship 
compact  and  influential,  there  the  pyrotechnic  "  orator" 
flickers  out.  The  "  mountain  eagles"  of  our  Alle- 
ghenies  and  Cordilleras,  the  "  silver-tongued  clarions" 
who  thrill  courts  and  stump  and  legislatures  on  the 
prairies  or  in  the  Mississippi  bottom,  cut  a  sorry  figure 
if  ever  they  get  before  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States  or  of  any  Eastern  State.  Oratory  is,  in  fact, 
only  a  means  of  impressing  simple  or  half-educated 
people  which  fails  when  the  people  get  beyond  that 
way  of  receiving  impressions.  The  civilized  world  of 
to-day  has  pronounced  against  it.  Bismarck  declares 
parliamentary  oratory  to  be  "  a  mischief."  England 
suppressed  it  a  generation  ago,  and  we  are  going  in  the 
same  direction. 

The  speaking  in  the  House  of  Commons  to-day  is 
extremely  severe  and  simple.  Members  usually  speak 
only  from  three  to  five  minutes  even  on  the  most  im- 
portant subjects,  and  their  language  is  studied  in  its 


PARLIAMENT:   THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS.     139 

simplicity  and  avoidance  of  rhetoric.  Of  course  there 
are  times  when  both  the  occasion  and  the  matter  de- 
mand  elaborate  and  more  lengthy  treatment  and  a 
minister  or  member  may  speak  for  an  hour  or  hours, 
hut  this  is  very  rare.  The  habitual  mode  is  for  mem- 
bers to  rise  only  for  a  few  moments,  delivering  them- 
selves straight  to  the  point  in  a  rather  conversational 
style,  but  every  word  weighed,  guarded,  and  carefully 
chosen,  very  much  as  an  experienced  merchant  might 
speak  in  making  a  contract.  The  British  legislator  has 
a  sense  of  person nl  responsibility  for  every  word  uttered 
on  the  floor  which  does  not  exist  in  our  legislative 
bodies  at  all.  In  fact,  the  conduct  of  business  in  Par- 
liament resembles  rather  the  consultation  of  responsible 
merchants  in  a  counting-room  or  the  meeting  of  a  small 
board  of  railway  directors  than  anything  like  our  pop- 
ular conception  of  a  legislative  discussion.  The  usage 
of  "interrogating the  Ministry"  also  leads  directly  both 
to  brevity,  a  conversational  style,  and  caution  and  preci- 
sion in  the  selection  of  words. 

The  substance  of  parliamentary  speech  is  generally 
substantial  and  good,  and  the  scene  would  be  impressive 
and  dignified  were  not  the  whole  eifect  marred  by  a  hesi- 
tation and  labored  awkwardness  in  speaking  which,  if  it 
is  not  affectation,  has  all  the  appearance  of  it.  But 
whether  an  affectation  or  an  infirmity,  it  is  a  serious 
blemish.  There  is  observable  throughout  all  the  Eng- 
lish higher  classes  a  cultivated  diffidence  and  tendency  to 
self-depreciation,  which  is  perhaps  in  the  start  a  recoil 
from  the  self-assertion  and  pretension  of  the  vulgar  and 
new-made  classes.  It  has  been  carried,  however,  to  an 
extreme  which  verges  on  effeminacy,  if  it  is  not  that 
already.  This  mannerism  of  halting  and  hawing  is  its 
development  on  the  rostrum,  and  it  effectually  disposes 
of  all  forensic  grace  and  a  good  deal  of  forensic  effi- 
ciency. The  far  remove  of  the  British  Parliament 
from  all  the  traditions  of  the  forum  is  best  illustrated 
by  reporting  one  of  Cicero's  speeches  as  it  would  be 


140  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

delivered  from  the  treasury  bench  to-day  :  Quousque 
— ah — tandem  — ah-a-abutere, —  Catilina — hem-m-m  — 
patientia,  n-nostraf  Quamdiu  nos  etiam — haw-aw — 
furor — hem — haw — ah-h-h.  Yet  this  is  the  exact  way 
in  which  a  British  legislator  grapples  with  a  question  of 
state,  and  to  get  the  force  of  what  he  is  saying  you  have 
to  disabuse  your  mind  absolutely  of  the  vice  and  un- 
gracefulness  of  its  delivery. 

Nevertheless,  taken  as  a  whole,  the  general  impres- 
sion made  by  the  House  of  Commons  when  compared 
with  the  leading  legislative  bodies  of  the. world  is  good. 
Its  dignity  is  well  sustained,  and  there  is  a  thorough  and 
conscious  power  in  the  membership  which  inspires  con- 
fidence. There  is  no  attempt  at  producing  effects  or 
making  a  personal  display,  and  the  body  keeps  pretty 
steadily  to  the  work  in  hand,  although,  for  reasons 
already  mentioned,  it  is  not  either  skilful  or  successful 
in  producing  results.  The  work  of  legislation  is  fear- 
fully behind,  by  common  admission.  It  is  to  the  high 
credit  of  the  membership,  however,  to  be  able  to  say 
when  you  look  over  the  floor  and  listen  to  it  you  feel  a 
sense  of  its  integrity.  You  believe  that  the  bulk  of  the 
body  is  honestly  at  work  trying  to  make  laws, — not 
talking  to  the  distant  county  of  Buncombe  or  manu- 
facturing issues  and  records  for  the  next  campaign. 

In  fact,  legislation — the  administration  of  public 
affairs — here  is  one  thing,  the  function  of  a  gentleman, 
and  getting  elected  is  another  thing,  and  public  opinion 
so  far  jealously  enforces  their  division.  That  is  at  least 
the  traditional  feeling,  which  as  yet  the  politician  dare 
not  offend.  He  must  not  conduct  his  campaign  per- 
sonally, but  through  an  agent. 

Hence  has  arisen  in  English  political  life  "  the  agent," 
— a  distinctive  cog-wheel  in  the  political  machine  to 
which  we  have  no  direct  equivalent.  The  agent  is  a 
kind  of  political  attorney  who  has  made  votes  and  the 
science  of  voting  a  study.  He  has  the  records  of  many 


PARLIAMENT:   THE  HOUSE   OF  COMMONS.     141 

elections  for  many  years.  All  elections  here  are  very 
local, — in  boroughs,  counties,  universities,  or  some  re- 
stricted limits.  The  agent  knows  the  past  history  of 
all  these  votes  and  the  characteristics  of  the  sections. 
He  can  calculate  political  "  probabilities"  and  give 
estimates,  and,  having  this  fund  of  special  knowledge 
and  this  special  bent  of  mind,  he  is  regularly  employed 
by  the  candidates  to  control  their  campaign  and  is  paid 
in  money  for  this  service.  The  nominee  is  presumed 
at  least  to  be  above  this  kind  of  work.  Thus  votes  and 
voting  are  one  thing  here,  and  politics — i.e.,  statesman- 
ship— is  another,  and  the  man  of  votes  cannot  presume 
to  be  the  politician. 

This  distinction  is  severely  maintained  clear  down 
to  comparatively  minute  details.  For  instance,  paid 
canvassers,  clerks,  managers,  or  watchers,  under  an  act 
of  1867,  are  not  allowed  to  be  polled,  and  lose  their 
votes  by  reason  of  the  nature  of  their  occupation. 

It  is  needed  to  be  said,  greatly  to  their  credit,  that 
the  English  laws  in  their  provisions  for  guarding  the 
integrity  of  the  polls  are  very  strict.  Gratuitous  re- 
freshments in  all  forms  have  long  been  forbidden. 
Charities  distributed  in  a  borough  by  a  man  who  after- 
wards contested  it  have  been  held  to  be  corruption. 
This  rule,  although  its  intent  is  honorable,  might  at 
times  work  great  hardships  both  to  the  poor  and  to 
liberal  gentlemen. 

Looking  over  the  House  of  Commons,  even  a  stranger 
can  see  clear  evidence  of  great  changes  at  work,  for 
under  the  healthy  law  of  the  British  Constitution  the 
House  must  change  with  the  changing  social  structure 
of  the  kingdom.  And  these  changes  follow  our  lead. 

LONDON. 


142  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

PARLIAMENT  (CONTINUED). 

THE  HOUSE  OF  LORDS — A  HISTORIC  SURVIVAL — THE  THRONH 
OF  ENGLAND — SAILING  OF  THE  "  MAYFLOWER." 

THE  House  of  Lords  has  less  interest  for  an  Ameri- 
can than  the  Commons,  for  it  is  a  lost  form  in  the  ma- 
chinery of  government.  Like  our  electoral  colleges, 
the  life  has  gone  out  of  it,  and  only  the  shell  remains; 
but  it  is  a  very  handsome  shell.  The  hall  itself  is  a 
gorgeous  flood  of  gold  and  color  flushed  with  soft  light 
and  walled  in  with  Gothic  oak  and  stained-glass  win- 
dows. Around  the  wall  in  solemn  niches  stand  the 
statues  of  the  bold  barons  of  Runnymede.  -The  stal- 
wart barons  of  England,  however,  have  long  since 
abandoned  this  floor. 

There  is  no  special  difficulty  in  seeing  a  session  of 
the  House  of  Lords,  as  the  order  of  any  peer  will 
admit  one,  and  not  merely  to  a  caged  gallery,  but  to 
very  good  seats  just  in  the  rear  of  the  floor  and  on  a 
level  with  it.  From  here  one  can  see  all  that  is  to  be 
seen,  which,  in  the  way  of  parliamentary  procedure,  is 
not  much,  and  what  there  is  of  it  is  dull  and  spiritless. 

As  the  American  visitor  walks  through  the  peers' 
corridor  on  his  way  to  that  portion  of  Westminster 
Hall  which  contains  the  chamber  of  the  House  of 
Lords,  he  experiences  for  a  moment  the  slight  shock 
of  a  complimentary  sensation  in  seeing  as  one  of 
the  eight  great  frescos  of  the  walls  "The  Sailing  of 
the  Mayflower,"  a  companion-piece  to  the  interminable 
"  Landing  of  the  Pilgrims,"  which  forever  stares  one 
in  the  face  from  bank-notes  and  legislative  halls 
throughout  all  the  confines  of  the  United  States.  But 


PARLIAMENT:    THE  HOUSE   OF  LORDS.        143 

it  certainly  makes  one  feel  suddenly  at  home,  and  with 
even  a  pride  of  kinship  in  the  place,  to  find  the  English 
end  of  the  story  told  with  such  honor,  and  almost  at 
the  footsteps  of  the  throne.  An  odd  sight  which  strikes 
one  passing  through  the  lobby  or  vestibule  to  the  floor, 
quite  a  small  and  cramped  chamber,  is  a  number  of 
rows  of  common  pegs,  such  as  might  be  in  the  closet 
of  a  boys7  school-room,  but  over  each  peg  the  name  of 
a  peer  of  England, — all  the  dukes  and  earls  and  barons. 
These  pegs  are  crowded  close  together,  and  are  for  the 
hats  and  coats  of  the  members, — a  peg  to  a  peer.  The 
provision  is  not  a  whit  better  than  that  of  many  a  com- 
mon school-house  in  our  land  to  which  barefoot  boys 
come  with  ragged  felts  and  perhaps  no  coat  at  all,  but 
it  is  all  there  is  for  these  lords,  who  drive  up  to  the 
door  with  a  brace  of  footmen,  perhaps,  and  from  a 
palace.  The  custom,  however,  has  some  historic  sanc- 
tion, and  they  stick  to  it.  It  will  probably  last  as  long 
as  the  House  of  Lords. 

Inside  of  the  main  hall  the  seating  and  general  ap- 
pearance of  the  interior  are  about  the  same  as  those  of 
the  House  of  Commons.  At  the  head  of  the  room, 
however,  where  the  Speaker's  desk  would  be  in  our 
Senate  chamber,  you  see  "  the  throne  of  England." 
You  feel  an  absurd  sense  of  suffering  a  disillusion  when 
you  see  only  a  chair,^-a  very  profound  achievement 
of  upholstery,  no  doubt,  but  still  a  chair.  The  Ameri- 
can republican  knows  in  his  heart  that  a  throne  must 
be  a  chair;  still,  as  it  is  associated  in  his  mind  with  fairy 
tales  and  myths  and  all  the  wonders  of  childhood,  it 
has  grown  into  something  grand  and  stately  and  im- 
pressive, and  he  suffers  a  pang  to  find  it  only  a  piece 
of  furniture  replaceable  from  any  cabinet-shop.  The 
throne  is  one  of  those  things  which,  on  the  whole,  it  is 
best  not  to  see.  When  it  is  resolved  into  a  common- 
place chair  there  is  a  shattering  of  faith  as  sad  as  when 
the  beanpole  of  Jack  the  Giant-Killer  vanishes  into 
the  thin  cold  air  of  experience  and  science.  In  front  of 


144  ENGLISH   POLITICS. 

the  throne  some  little  distance,  and  at  its  foot,  is  the  cele- 
brated "woolsack."  It  is  a  capacious,  heavily-cushioned 
footstool.  On  this  sits  the  Lord  Chancellor  of  England, 
who  presides  over  the  sessions  of  the  House  of  Lords. 

By  the  law  and  theory  of  the  English  government, 
the  House  of  Lords  is  something  more  than  a  co-ordi- 
nate body  of  the  national  legislature,  like  our  Senate. 
It  has  an  absolute  veto  on  all  legislation  by  the  House 
of  Commons.  Not  only  is  this  power  utterly  unused, 
but  it  has  ceased  even  to  deter.  It  will  never  be 
claimed.  Politically,  the  House  of  Lords  has  ceased 
to  exist,  its  functions  in  the  government  having  passed 
to  the  Cabinet,  or  Ministry,  which  is  practically  the 
Upper  House.  Even  the  family  influence  of  the  peers, 
to  yield  political  results  in  this  day,  must  be  wielded 
through  the  House  of  Commons. 

As  a  historical  picture,  however,  the  House  of  Lords 
still  survives  in  good  condition.  A  nominal  number 
of  peers  attend  its  daily  sessions  during  Parliament 
season,  and  mechanically  pass  all  the  bills  and  go 
through  all  the  forms  of  legislation.  On  state  occa- 
sions this  venerable  relic  solemnly  "  summons"  the  lower 
House  into  its  presence,  and  the  House  comes.  The 
crimsoned  hall,  too,  serves  as  a  splendid  stage,  where 
the  queen  occasionally  gives  a  grand  spectacular  political 
tableau  something  like  one  of  the  gorgeous  religious  func- 
tions yon  see  at  intervals  in  the  great  churches  of  Rome. 

It  is  worth  while  dropping  in  on  the  House  of  Lords 
as  often  as  possible  just  to  study  the  personnel  of  the 
body,  and  see  that  type  of  man  which  a  privileged 
class,  carefully  tended  for  centuries,  and  draining  the 
blood  and  soil  of  the  land, — its  education  and  culture 
and  power  and  wealth, — evolves.  That  is  about  all, 
although  it  is  a  good  deal.  You  will  see  nothing  of 
debate  or  action  in  it,  learn  nothing  of  politics.  The 
House  of  Lords  in  our  day  is  an  interesting  social 
study,  but  it  has  ceased  to  be  a  political  one,  save  as  an 
antique  or  remain. 


FOREIGN  SERVICE.  145 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

FOREIGN  SERVICE. 

THE  OLD  AMBASSADOR  AND  THE  NEW — A  NEWSPAPER  PLENI- 
POTENTIARY— THE  OLD-WORLD  AMBASSADOR  WITHOUT  USES 
IN  THE  POLITICAL  MACHINERY  OF  THE  NEW — EDUCATIONAL 
FUNCTIONS  OF  THE  SERVICE— How  BEST  TO  CONSERVE  IT — 

KOTATION  ON  THE  DIPLOMATIC  LlST — TENDENCY  OF  THE  EU- 
ROPEAN LIFE  TO  DE-AMERICANIZE  THE  KEPUBLICAN  CITI- 
ZEN. 

IT  is  one  of  the  anomalies  of  the  present  transition 
state  of  society  from  old  ideas  and  usages  to  newer  ones 
that,  while  our  government  sends  fifteen  ministers  to 
Europe  at  salaries  of  from  ,$7500  to  §17,500,  to  repre- 
sent us  and  speak  for  us,  the  incessant,  effective  repre- 
sentation is  done  by  a  modest  journalist  in  Philadelphia, 
Mr.  Joel  Cook,  the  American  correspondent  of  the  Lon- 
don Times,  whose  voice  is  heard  every  day,  not  only  in 
one  but  in  all  the  courts  of  Europe,  and  not  only  by 
the  official  governments,  but  by  the  people.  He  is  by 
far  the  most  omnipresent  and  influential  envoy  extraor- 
dinary that  has  ever  gone  from  this  country. 

While  the  London  Times  has  not  the  circulation  of 
many  of  the  papers  of  Europe,  it  has  a  weight  and  in- 
fluence which  none  of  them  have.  It  is  taken  by  every 
foreign  minister  of  all  countries,  and  in  all  countries  its 
dispatches  are  accredited  as  authority.  They  arc  quoted 
in  Parliament  and  at  the  dinner-tables  and  official  desks 
of  ambassadors.  What  Europe  at  this  time  from  day 
to  day  thinks  of  America  awl  the  American  people  is 
decided,  not  by  the  communications  of  our  diplomatic 
force,  but  by  what  says  the  London  Times. 

There  is  a  grave  and  growing  doubt  in  the  public 
mind  whether  our  foreign  or  diplomatic  service  is  worth 
its  cost  to  the  republic  since  the  introduction  of  ocean 
o  k  13 


146  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

cables 'and  newspaper  correspondence  and  the  absolute 
adoption  of  the  Monroe  doctrine  as  an  article  of  popular 
political  faith.  A  look  over  the  ground  I  think  justi- 
fies the  conclusion  that  it  has  little  meaning  at  all  for 
us  any  more  in  the  old  sense,  but  that  possibly  it  can 
still  be  put  to  better  and  higher  uses  than  it  has  ever 
served,  and  that  without  change  of  form.  It  is  better 
perhaps  for  the  present  to  let  the  shell  of  the  old  insti- 
tution remain,  but  to  gradually  give  to  the  service  itself 
a  new  character  and  function. 

"The  ambassador"  is  the  survival  of  a  European 
condition  of  society  which  never  was  transferred  here. 
His  functions  belong  to  a  machinery  of  government 
which  never  was  put  in  motion  on  this  continent.  His 
work,  in  the  natural  revolution  of  our  new  social  growth, 
lias  been  taken  up  and  is  discharged  on  a  larger  scale  by 
a  new  personage, — the  special  correspondent. 

Prince  Metternich,  in  his  gossippy  memories  of  Old- 
World  and  old-fashioned  diplomacy,  just  given  to  print 
by  his  son,  relates  that  he  once  asked  a  brother  ambas- 
sador "  how  he  contrived  to  have  a  letter  to  send  to 
London  every  post  day."  There  were  two  a  week. 

"You  will  see  no  difficulty  in  it  when  I  tell  you  my 
secret.  If  anything  comes  to  my  knowledge  that  may 
interest  rny  government,  I  tell  it;  if  not,  I  invent  my 
news,  and  contradict  it  by  the  next  courier." 

Now,  that  is  exactly  the  trick  of  the  lazy  or  unrelia- 
ble newspaper  correspondent  of  our  time  ;  but  it  illus- 
trates forcibly  how  exactly  one  of  the  functions  of  the 
old  ambassador  has  devolved  upon  the  new  international 
envoy.  The  ambassador  reported  to  his  government 
all  that  he  could  of  the  social  and  political  movements 
in  foreign  countries;  the  correspondent  reports  exactly 
the  same,  only  a  thousand  times  more  fully,  to  the 
people,  which  is  our  government. 

The  Old-World  ambassador  had  three  grand  functions 
which  were  the  meaning  of  his  office  and  the  reason  of 
his  being  : 


FOREIGN  SERVICE.  147 

I.  To  represent  in  his  person  the  relations,  whatever 
they  were,  which  existed  between  his  own  Government 
and  the  Government  to  which  he  was  sent. 

II.  At  times  to  act  for  his  Government  on  his  own 
responsibility  according  to  his  best  judgment. 

III.  To  keep  his  Government  constantly  advised  of 
all  the  news. 

For  the  American  situation  the  Monroe  doctrine  has 
done  away  with  the  first  of  these  functions,  the  tele- 
graph with  the  second,  and  the  newspaper  with  the 
third. 

We  have  no  foreign  relations  in  the  sense  of  Euro- 
pean diplomacy  with  any  power  in  Europe.  When  it 
is  necessary  for  a  minister  to  act  now,  he  receives  spe- 
cific instructions  by  telegraph.  He  can  even  cable  a 
conversation.  The  diplomatic  reports  are  always  far 
behind  the  public  information  of  wire  and  type. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  our  entire  diplomatic  list  could 
be  swept  away  with  entire  safety.  Our  only  real  rela- 
tions with  foreign  countries  arc  commercial  ones,  and 
these  are  handled  by  the  consular  department.  As  far 
as  my  judgment  goes,  however,  I  would  not  advise  its 
abolition,  but  strongly  urge  its  retention  for  the  present 
on  broader  grounds  of  national  utility.  There  is  no 
more  broadening  education  than  the  comparative  study 
of  foreign  nations,  their  governments,  social  structure, 
and  systems  of  thought  and  religion,  and  there  is  no 
education  more  needful  at  present  to  our  own  national 
wants. 

The  diplomatic  service  affords  an  admirable  school 
for  this.  It  may  be  made,  in  fact,  a  national  free  college 
for  this  kind  of  education,  and  its  uses  in  this  way  are 
twofold.  It  serves  to  educate  personally  the  men  whom 
we  specially  select  for  this  elevated  tuition,  and,  if  their 
selection  is  judicious,  they  in  turn  become  teachers  of 
the  whole  people.  A  James  Russell  Lowell  in  Eng- 
land, a  Motley  or  Bancroft  or  Bayard  Taylor  or  an 


148  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

Andrew  White  at  Berlin,  a  George  P.  Marsh  at  Rome, 
do  something  more  than  answer  all  our  meagre  official 
uses,  or  than  even  to  train  and  strengthen  themselves. 
They  serve  to  translate  and  send  over  something  of 
England  and  Germany  and  all  Europe  to  us,  and  Bret 
Harte  and  Eugene  Schuyler,  at  their  consular  desks,  are 
worth  a  good  deal  more  to  the  American  people  and 
literature  than  all  their  possible  service  as  registrars  of 
shipping  entries.  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  consul  to  Liv- 
erpool, is  doing  good  service  to  the  whole  nation  yet, 
although  the  Government  and  the  men  that  sent  him 
are  long  ago  gone  with  him  into  the  grave.  It  is  by 
the  adoption  of  this  principle  of  appointment — the  se- 
lection for  diplomatic  posts  of  men  of  high  character 
and  of  scholarly  rather  than  of  an  average  politician's 
abilities — that  we  can  best  conserve  our  diplomatic  de- 
partment under  an  altering  condition  of  things,  and 
obtain  its  fullest  and  highest  uses  for  the  whole  nation. 

At  all  events,  as  it  stands  at  present,  our  diplomatic 
service  is  thoroughly  illogical  and  unsatisfactory,  and 
no  change  or  experiment  even  could  much  impair  its 
illusory  efficiency. 

The  salaries  of  the  several  embassies  are  extremely 
inadequate  to  do  what  they  are  supposed  to  do,  and  it 
is  impossible  for  the  ministers  living  on  them  to  repre- 
sent our  country  as  other  countries  are  represented. 
If  it  is  the  idea  of  the  government  to  perpetuate  the 
old-fashioned  system  of  diplomatic  representation  and 
communication,  then  funds  should  be  supplied  our  rep- 
resentatives to  act  their  part  decently,  according  to  the 
requirements  of  the  old-fashioned  code. 

Again,  according  to  the  established  law  of  diplo- 
matic usage  and  etiquette  settled  long  before  we  came 
on  the  stage,  an  ambassador  is  one  who  represents  the 
person  of  a  sovereign  ruler  and  always  outranks  a 
minister  plenipotentiary,  who  only  represents  the  gov- 
ernment of  a  country.  Now,  we  know  nothing  at  all 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  sanctity  or  superiority  of  the 


FOREIGN  SERVICE.  149 

person  of  a  sovereign,  and,  when  it  is  explained  to  us, 
look  on  it  only  as  either  political  heresy  or  silliness  ;  but 
we  are  forced  all  the  time  to  impliedly  admit  it  in  our 
diplomatic  relations.  At  any  court  of  Europe  in  any 
question  of  rank  or  precedence,  any  ambassador  repre- 
senting a  toy  king  (of  Greece,  for  instance)  or  a  bur- 
lesque emperor  (of  Hayti,  for  instance)  will  always  take 
the  lead  of  the  republican  representative  of  fifty  mil- 
lions of  American  citizens.  No  American  minister, 
no  matter  what  his  years  or  influence  or  seniority  of 
service,  can  ever  be  the  dean  of  the  diplomatic  college 
at  any  capital  where  there  is  an  ambassador  present. 
This  is  the  very  case  now  at  one  of  the  prominent 
courts  of  Europe. 

But  there  is  another  and  more  serious  consequence 
resulting  from  this  fundamental  diplomatic  law.  An 
ambassador  as  representing  the  person  of  his  soven -i^n 
may  always  demand  and  have  a  personal  interview  with 
the  sovereign  of  the  country  to  which  he  is  accredited. 
A  minister  plenipotentiary  may  deal  only  through  the 
ministry.  In  a  crisis  the  foreign  sovereign  of  his  own 
pleasure  may  grant  him  an  interview,  but  the  minister 
cannot  dcMiiand  it  as  a  right.  We  are  therefore  in  this 
false  position,  that  should  our  relations  with  any  Eu- 
ropean court  at  any  time  become  critical,  our  minister 
at  that  very  court  would  not  have  equal  facilities  for 
action  with  the  ambassadors  of  other  powers.  For 
instance,  the  empire  of  Russia  is  an  autocratic  govern- 
ment. The  pleasure  of  the  Emperor  is  supreme,  and 
his  word  is  law.  Should  this  imperial  person  meditate 
a  huge  war  involving  the  interests  of  every  first-rate 
power  on  the  earth,  the  ambassadors  from  England  and 
Germany  could  see  him  and  talk  with  him  at  their 
will ;  but  the  minister  plenipotentiary  of  the  United 
States  at  St.  Petersburg  could  not, — not  even  if  the 
threatened  war  was  with  ourselves.  Could  any  position 
be  more  false  than  this,  and  what  is  the  propriety  of 
recognizing  a  system  which  forces  us  to  accept  it? 

13* 


150  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

Lastly,  the  men  whom  we  do  send  on  this  important 
service,  which  may  be  made  more  important  every 
year,  should  be  real  Americans,  fresh  from  the  soil,  and 
not  those  who  have  lived  long  enough  abroad  to  have 
de-Americanized  themselves.  The  European  life  in- 
evitably tends  to  lessen  one's  respect  for  the  human 
person  and  to  weaken  one's  trust  and  hope  in  the  people. 
This  moral  change  is  sure  to  come,  and  it  comes  so 
slowly  and  insensibly  that  the  victims  are  not  aware  of 
their  own  transmutation.  It  must  needs  be  when  the 
vast  mass  of  the  people  are  looked  down  upon,  are 
classified  to  the  bottom,  are  used,  when  perhaps  they 
have  lost  respect  for  themselves,  that  one  comes  to  feel 
unconsciously  contempt  for  them,  and  that  manhood 
fails  to  command  the  respect  which  is  given  to  class  and 
privilege.  Yet  an  instinctive  reverence  for  humanity, 
no  matter  what  its  mask,  and  faith  in  the  people  are  two 
of  the  foundation-pillars  of  the  republic,  and  he  who  has 
lost  them  does  not  any  more  represent  the  American 
people. 

There  is  a  sound,  healthy  democratic  principle  at 
bottom  in  the  usage  of  rotation  in  office  on  foreign  ser- 
vice. Jefferson  held,  I  think,  that  no  man  could  rep- 
resent us  abroad  with  usefulness  longer  than  eight  years, 
and  he  was  about  right,  although  no  fixed  term  can  be 
intelligently  laid  down,  for  men  are  not  alike.  Some 
men  travel  in  Europe  only  during  a  long  residence  of 
years.  Others  begin  to  live  there  from  the  moment  of 
their  landing  on  its  shores. 


COMPARATIVE  POLITICS. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 


COMPARATIVE   POLITICS. 

CONTRAST  BETWEEN  THE  POLITICS  OF  ENGLAND  AND  OF  THE 
UNITED  STATES — THK  COMPARATIVE  MAGNITUDE  AND  RE- 
SPONSIBILITIES OF  ADMINISTRATION — EVOLUTION  OF  THE 
EUROPEAN  STATESMAN— THE  EDUCATED  FORCES  OF  EURO- 
PKAN  POLITICS — THE  INTELLECTUAL  REQUIREMENTS  OF  GOV- 
ERNMENT ABROAD — THE  ENGLISH  STATESMEN. 

THERE  is  nothing  in  all  Europe  that  challenges  one's 
profounder  respect  than  the  strength  of  her  statesmen, 
and  nothing  that  is  more  of  a  revelation  to  a  New-World 
stranger  than  the  gravity  and  intellectual  range  of 
her  politics.  Government  abroad  is  a  science,  here  it 
"runs  itself  ;v  and  there  could  be  nothing  better  calcu- 
lated to  repress  the  "spread  eagle"  of  the  average!  citizen 
than  an  honest  attempt  to  master  the  political  system 
of  one  of  these  "  effete  monarchies,"  and  to  gain  some 
definite  conception  of  its  practical  workings.  The 
problem  of  government  in  Europe  is  so  vexed,  the 
dangers  so  imminent,  so  fixed  and  hereditary,  the  rela- 
tions with  all  neighboring  powers  so  involved  and  en- 
tangling, the  internal  interests  so  conflicting,  the  people 
so  poor  and  discontented  and  burdened,  that  our.  own 
troubles  and  questions  of  state  seem  poor  and  childish 
in  comparison. 

Studying  the  range  and  demands  of  European  states- 
manship, one  sees  readily  how  it  has  produced  the  edu- 
cated statesman,  so  unfamiliar  to  us,  and  why  the  con- 
duct of  government  abroad  calls  for  a  breadth  of 
scholarship  and  a  trained  intellectual  force  that  have  not 
yet  been  a  necessity  in  the  United  States.  The  "  log 
cabin"  and  "  mill-boy"  and  "  horny-handed"  statesmen 


152  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

of  our  prairie  reputation  would  wreck  any  European 
ship  of  state  irretrievably  in  three  months,  perhaps  in 
twenty-four  hours.  In  viewing  the  field  of  foreign 
governments  one  sees  a  new  wisdom  and  safety  in  the 
Monroe  doctrine.  Perhaps  its  framers  foresaw  even  in 
their  early  hour  that  our  crude  political  leaders  would 
never  be  able  to  meet  in  equal  combat  the  intellectual 
giants  of  the  Old  World. 

To  illustrate  more  clearly  the  disparity  between  the 
magnitude  of  the  burden  of  European  government  and 
the  simplicity  of  ours,  I  propose  to  etch  a  running  par- 
allel between  the  political  systems  of  Great  Britain  and 
of  our  country, — in  the  briefest  outline,  of  course ;  but 
it  will  serve  to  suggest  the  wide  difference  between  the 
requirements  of  statesmanship  in  the  two  nations.  I 
select  England  because  the  similarity  of  her  institutions 
admits  best  of  direct  comparison,  but  nearly  every  Euro- 
pean government  faces  all  the  troubles  and  dangers  and 
responsibilities  of  England ;  some  have  them  intensi- 
fied ;  and  some  have  special  problems  of  their  own. 

I.  Perhaps  the  initial  and  commonest  form  of  national 
self-glorification  with  us  is  the  boast  of  our  space  of  ter- 
ritory,— the  eagle  that  rests  on  Rocky  Mountain  cordil- 
leras  and  laves  his  wings  in  the  Atlantic  and  Pa- 
cific. Now,  extent  of  territory  is  in  itself  not  necessarily 
either  a  danger  or  a  source  of  power,  although  it  may  be 
both.  Judea  and  Greece  have  been  the  mightiest  forces 
of  known  civilization,  and  the  Roman  empire  managed 
to  govern  the  whole  world  without  steamships,  railways, 
or  telegraphs.  But,  as  far  as  magnitude  of  dominion 
tests  statesmanship  or  is  evidence  of  national  power,  we 
with  one  segment  of  a  continent  do  not  begin  to  approach 
Great  Britain.  The  British  rule  to-day  extends  over 
one-third  of  the  surface  of  the  globe,  and  over  one-fourth 
of  its  population.  We  are  but  a  modest  principality  in 
comparison. 

Again,  the   territory  of  the  British  empire  is  not 


COMPARATIVE  POLITICS  153 

compact  and  contiguous  as  is  ours  (with  the  inconsid- 
erable exception  of  Alaska),  but  lies  in  every  quarter 
of  the  globe,  separated  by  seas  and  continents,  and  on 
it  dwell  people  of  every  race  and  of  nearly  every  lan- 
guage, speaking  in  different  tongues,  thinking  by  dif- 
ferent modes,  inheriting  diverse  systems  of  thought  and 
religion  and  political  tradition.  We  are  one  people. 

II.  In  England  the  structure  of  society  is  a  rigid 
stratification  of  classes ;  in  the  United  States  there  is 
but  one  homogeneous  class.  The  people  of  our  country 
are  one  mass  of  molecular  atoms,  each  atom  politically 
alike.  The  English  legislator  legislates  for  many 
classes,  each  with  defined  limits  and  vested  rights  fixed 
by  law  and  sanctified  by  inheritance.  These  rights  and 
the  interests  of  the  several  classes  from  time  to  time  jar 
and  clash.  He  must  legislate  for  many  kingdoms  in  one. 
The  American  legislator,  on  the  other  hand,  simply 
passes  one  law  for  all,  because  all  are  equal  before  the 
law  and  in  the  eye  of  the  law.  By  virtue  also  of  this 
homogeneousness  of  the  people,  political  ideas  travel 
rapidly  and  equally,  permeating  a  common  mass.  In 
England  they  cannot,  by  reason  of  the  sectional  and 
class  barriers.  A  given  view  of  politics  or  of  some 
special  question  of  policy  may  be  accepted  and  adopted 
by  some  one  class  long  before  it  reaches  another,  or  it 
may  linger  long  in  some  certain  locality  for  historical 
reasons.  The  Scotchman  and  the  Welshman  and  the 
Irishman  do  not  fuse  mentally  with  the  Englishman, 
do  not  think  according  to  the  same  modes  of  thought. 
Even  the  Yorkshire  man  and  Lancashire  man  stand 
apart,  and  the  man  of  Surrey  or  Devon  from  him  of 
Northumberland.  Nor,  for  that  matter,  do  the  farmers 
with  the  gentry,  or  the  clergy  with  the  laborer,  or  the 
professional  man  with  the  peerage,  or  any  of  these 
classes  with  the  others.  The  body  politic  has  neither 
the  constant  internal  circulation  nor  the  uniform  molec- 
ular composition  of  ours.  Everything  in  England 
is  fixed  to  the  soil  in  small  local  centres  by  fastenings 


154  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

of  society  and  of  blood,  and  there  is  not  that  mobility 
in  the  community  at  large  by  virtue  of  which,  with  us, 
a  national  idea  travels  rapidly  and  uniformly  over  the 
whole  nation.  Each  county  has  different  customs, 
usages,  and  habits  of  thought  which  differentiate  it  from 
the  rest  of  the  nation  as  a  whole  and  in  all  its  social 
strata.  The  great  family  estates,  covering  compact 
territories,  transmit  family  peculiarities  of  living,  of 
thinking,  even  of  farming  and  working,  and  operate 
as  a  barrier  to  national  impulses  of  thought.  In  our 
country  a  wave  of  thought  moves  rapidly  and  evenly 
over  all  the  land  and  through  all  the  people.  The 
whole  country  feels  it  at  once.  Witness  not  only  the 
passage  of  political  emotions  over  the  national  mind, 
the  rapid  transit  of  a  new  party  issue,  or  of  the  thoughts 
of  a  great  speech,  but  of  social  or  mental  sensation,  as 
in  the  sweep  of  the  praying-band  or  spelling-bee  excite- 
ment from  one  ocean  to  the  other.  In  England  it  is 
not  so.  Men  do  not  travel,  ideas  do  not  travel.  It  is 
but  thirteen  hours  from  London  to  Edinburgh,  but  it 
takes  more  than  thirteen  years  for  a  political  idea  to 
traverse  the  route. 

III.  Our  government  is  a  simple  republic,  a  federa- 
tion of  a  body  of  equal  and  co-ordinate  States,  each 
State  peopled  by  a  population  of  the  same  race,  the 
same  language,  the  same  history.  All  the  States  have 
the  same  rights,  powers,  and  obligations,  and  all  these 
are  defined.  The  administration  of  the  government, 
even,  is  by  a  written  chart.  Everything  is  laid  down 
on  paper. 

Compare  with  this  simplicity  the  tremendous  impe- 
rial system  of  Great  Britain, — a  system  that  has  an 
illustration  only  in  Rome  under  the  Caesars.  A  little 
class  of  great  families  dominate,  first,  their  own  order 
and  through  it  England,  and,  controlling  social  Eng- 
land, elect  their  own  Parliament.  Through  this  Parlia- 
ment they  govern  allied  kingdoms  and  an  empire 
stretching  through  Asia,  Africa,  the  Americas,  Europe, 


COMPARATIVE  POLITICS.  155 

Australasia,  and  the  islands  of  the  sea.  The  imperial 
standard  of  this  great  dominion  floats  over  colonial  na- 
tions of  all  races,  spanning  even  the  great  gulf  between 
the  Aryan  and  Semitic  bloods ;  over  people  of  every  re- 
ligion and  creed,  the  regnant  faith  of  Christianity  being 
in  the  minority ;  over  all  latitudes,  all  colors,  all  lan- 
guages, all  traditions,  all  forms  of  government.  The 
British  empire  of  to-day,  morally  and  physically,  is 
grander  than  ever  were  those  of  Greece  or  Rome,  and 
its  rule  is  far  more  conscientious  and  beneficent.  And 
these  principalities  and  powers  and  provinces  and  dis- 
tant kingdoms  of  the  seas  the  imperial  Parliament 
governs,  not  on  one  simple  and  uniform  plan,  but  by 
ever  diverse  and  varying  machineries, — by  legislatures, 
by  armies,  by  imperial  decrees,  by  proconsuls,  by  mili- 
tary governors,  by  civil  governors,  by  unpretentious 
u  political  agents,"  or  by  regal  viceroys.  The  name  is 
nothing,  the  power  is  always  there.  The  heart  of  this 
marvellous  body  politic  throbs  at  Westminster,  whence 
its  currents  of  blood  are  impelled  to  the  uttermost  ends 
of  the  earth.  The  brain  is  the  premier  of  England. 
Contrast  this  with  our  ready-made  work  at  Washington. 
IV.  Our  provincial  statesmen  groan  under  what  they 
call  the  burden  of  national  patronage.  When  they 
affect  liberal  political  culture,  they  te!l  us  that  the  un- 
paralleled magnitude  of  this  patronage  is  a  grave  danger 
to  the  republic.  When  they  simply  claim  to  be  strong 
politicians,  "  leaders,"  they  struggle  and  wrestle  and 
raise  mighty  tempests  about  the  distribution  of  a  few 
petty  clerkships  and  evanescent  post-offices.  The  whole 
government  patronage  of  the  United  States  is  but  as  a 
flea-bite  to  that  of  England.  Whatever  we  have  Eng- 
land has  on  a  grander  scale.  What  are  our  petty  post- 
offices,  with  New  York  at  $8000  salary  and  Philadelphia 
at  $4000  heading  the  list,  to  the  limitless  range  of  public 
offices  necessary  to  administer  the  vast  and  imposing 
imperial  machine?  Consider  the  endless  civil-service 
list;  the  post-offices;  the  telegraph-service,  which,  in 


156  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

Great  Britain,  is  governmental ;  the  army  and 
commissions  for  colossal  hosts  and  fleets ;  the  swollen 
pension-lists,  not  only  military,  but  civil,  literary,  and 
political ;  the  Church  preferment ;  the  court  patronage 
to  tradesmen ;  the  immense  foreign  service;  and,  finally, 
the  dazzling  rewards  of  titles,  orders,  and  peerages. 
Consider  alone  the  patronage  of  India,  with  its  state 
railways  and  public  works,  an  army  of  four  hundred 
thousand  men,  and  a  parental  government  over  a  popu- 
lation of  more  than  two  hundred  millions  of  souls. 

On  this  question  of  patronage  I  will  instance  just 
one  item  to  illustrate  what  its  splendors  and  magnitude 
and  tempting  prizes  are  under  the  English  government. 
It  is  an  item  to  which  we  have  no  equivalent  at  all,  like 
the  titles  and  orders  and  peerages  and  telegraph-  and 
railway-service  and  foreign  civil  list,  and  other  depart- 
ments. The  bishoprics  of  the  Church  of  England  are 
in  the  gift  of  the  government.  There  are  twenty-eight 
of  them  and  two  archbishoprics.  The  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  receives  $75,000  a  year  and  two  official 
palaces  for  a  residence,  and  holds  office  for  life.  The 
Archbishop  of  York  gets  $50,000  a  year,  and  a  palace 
and  his  office  for  life.  Either  of  these  positions,  in  the 
way  of  worldly  emolument,  is  better  than  the  Presi- 
dency of  the  United  States.  The  twenty -eight  bishops 
receive  salaries  ranging  from  $20,000  to  $50,000  a 
year  (they  average  over  $25,000  a  year),  a  residence,  a 
seat  in  the  House  of  Lords,  and  they  have  all  this  for 
life.  The  whole  higher-class  patronage  in  the  gift  of 
the  United  States,  the  Supreme  bench,  the  Cabinet,  the 
Vice-presidency,  and  our  entire  European  diplomatic 
list,  does  not  begin  to  approach  in  splendor  or  dignity 
or  money  value  to  this  one  item.  The  whole  body  of 
these  great  offices  of  our  state  are  less  in  number  than 
these  bishoprics ;  their  salaries  range  but  from  $7500 
to  $17,500;  there  are  no  official  residences  attached, 
and  they  are  not  held  for  life. 

V.  This  ecclesiastical  item  of  patronage  suggests  one 


COMPARATIVE  POLITICS.  157 

of  the  ugliest  of  all  the  problems  of  European  politics, 
— one  which  is  a  danger  and  burden  to  every  European 
Government  to-day,  but  from  which  our  country  hap- 
pily is  and  always  has  been  entirely  free, — the  vexed 
question  of  Church  and  State.  The  Established  Church 
of  England,  a  Church  embracing  a  minority  only  of  the 
people,  is  a  part  of  the  Government  of  England.  The 
head  of  the  Church  is  the  head  of  the  State;  its 
bishops,  by  virtue  of  their  mitres,  sit  in  Parliament;  its 
clergy  are  necessarily  a  kind  of  national  police.  The 
Church  is  in  the  very  Constitution.  Its  interests  enter 
sharply  into  every  party  platform  and  struggle.  They 
fought  over  the  Irish-Church  disestablishment  a  few 
years  ago, — they  are  going  to  fight  soon  over  English 
disestablishment.  As  a  consequence,  the  clerical  inter- 
est goes  actively  into  the  political  campaigns  in  a  way 
that  rather  shocks  our  American  sense  of  propriety. 
The  clergy  assist  at  the  nominations,  and  the  Church 
vote  at  the  polls  is  cast  on  as  purely  selfish  and  grace- 
less principles  as  would  be  the  Irish  or  negro  ballot  in 
our  cities.  The  alliance  of  the  Church  and  liquor  in- 
terests— "  beer  and  Bibles" — is  one  of  the  open  scandals 
of  the  recent  elections.  Further,  this  marriage  of 
Church  and  State  makes  an  appeal  to  religious  hatreds 
and  fanaticism,  the  most  dangerous  and  wicked  of  all 
passions,  an  effective  political  weapon  always  on  hand 
and  useful.  A  vulgar  anti- popery  speech  that,  in  the 
United  States,  would  hardly  be  tolerated,  is  acceptable 
and  effective  on  most  English  hustings.  Thus  it  conies 
that  premiers  and  cardinal-princes  are  writing  hotly  on 
questions  which  we  have  removed  entirely  from  the 
field  of  popular  passion. 

While  the  situation  of  Church  and  State  in  England 
is  indecorous  and  embarrassing  to  Transatlantic  view, 
it  is  only  that,  and  not  a  danger,  as  it  is  to  most  of  the 
other  European  nations.  In  Italy  the  Church  is  a  vast 
octopus,  with  its  dank,  flaccid  arras  sucking  at  every 
pore  of  the  State.  The  fight  of  Germany  with  Rome 


158  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

is  historic  and  inherited.  At  this  very  hour  the  inflam- 
mable question  of  French  politics  is  the  expulsion  of 
the  Jesuits.  Even  Japan  has  just  got  through  a  gi- 
gantic civil  war  to  decide  this  very  question, — the  su- 
premacy of  Tycoon  or  Mikado.  We  alone  of  all 
nations  have  not  inherited  in  our  politics  this  brand  of 
discord,  which  has  been  the  occasion  of  more  wars  in 
Christendom  than  any  one  other  cause, — perhaps  of  more 
than  all  others  combined. 

VI.  We  have  no  foreign  relations,  no  entangling  al- 
liances, no  responsibilities  or  obligations  outside  of  our- 
selves. With  every  European  people  this  is  the  main 
field  of  politics.  The  nation  itself  is  but  the  starting- 
point  of  government.  The  real  work  is  ramified  and 
spread  all  over  the  continent,  perhaps  all  over  the  world. 
Not  a  step  can  be  taken  without  consulting  other  nations 
and  understanding  their  interests.  Europe  is  as  we  would 
be  were  all  the  States  of  our  Union  independent,  antago- 
nistic, and  with  inherited  animosities  of  blood,  race,  and 
faith,  with  Diverse  languages,  modes  of  thought,  and 
political  traditions,  and  with  the  quarrels  and  revenges 
of  a  thousand  years  to  settle.  It  is  this  that  makes  the 
minister  of  state  so  important  a  personage  in  European 
government  and  so  often  its  head.  Following  traditional 
forms,  we  have  made  our  Secretary  of  State  the  head  of 
our  Cabinet,  but  it  is  only  a  survival.  He  is  but  a 
shadow,  for  happily  we  have  no  foreign  affairs.  It  is 
this  also  which  produces  the  broad  scholarship  and  in- 
tellectual supremacy  of  the  European  statesman,  and 
drives  the  demagogue  and  the  half  -educated  out  of  the 
field  of  politics.  Our  Monroe  doctrine  is  a  political 
blessing,  but  it  necessarily  limits  the  range  and  powers 
of  our  public  men,  because  it  limits  the  demands  and 
the  strain  on  them.  It  deprives  them  of  the  compara- 
tive study  of  politics  and  history,  which  European  poli- 
tics, on  the  other  hand,  enforce  and  necessitate.  And 
comparative  study  has  been  the  law  of  all  advancement 
in  thought  and  science  in  this  century. 


COMPARATIVE   POLITICS.  159 

The  general  elections  of  1880  in  England  were  fought 
on  issues  almost  entirely  outside  of  England,  and  they 
involved  an  intelligent  knowledge  not  only  of  modern 
continental  politics  and  history,  but  of  the  Greek,  Ot- 
toman, and  Asiatic  civilizations.  Just  imagine  the 
statesman  of  Kentucky  or  Nebraska  being  called  on 
for  this  kind  of  work !  Or  how  many  members  are 
there  in  any  State  delegation  in  Congress  whom  we 
could  trust  to  vote  for  us  on  such  questions  when  the 
consequence  of  an  ignorant  or  reckless  vote  might  be 
war  ? 

VII.  Finally,  the  critical  responsibilities  of  govern- 
ment in  our  country  are  a  mere  nothing  compared  with 
those  which  immediately  and  forever  confront  the  Eu- 
ropean statesman.  We  never  feel  them  ;  they  are  never 
brought  home  either  to  the  people  or  to  the  legislator. 

The  European  statesman  legislates  with  a  sword  sus- 
pended over  his  head.  He  deals  with  armed  nations 
ready  to  strike.  Vast  camps  of  populations  surround 
his  own,  in  fatal  readiness  to  move  at  a  .signal.  A 
false  vote,  and  before  it  was  circulated  through  the 
kingdom  hostile  bayonets  would  be  swarming  across 
the  frontier,  and  hostile  artillery  thundering  over  the 
land.  Within  twenty-four  hours  after  a  declaration  of 
war  by  Germany  or  France  or  Italy  or  Russia,  the  cav- 
alry would  be  over  the  border.  A  legislative  debate  in 
Europe  may  be  like  brandishing  a  torch  in  a  powder- 
magazine. 

The  European  statesman,  further,  has  absolutely  no 
margin  on  which  to  make  mistakes  in  home  affairs, 
either.  He  deals  with  a  discontented  people,  a  bur- 
dened people,  a  suffering  people.  With  the  utmost 
wisdom  and  prudence,  the  average  lot  of  the  people 
will  not  be  a  pleasant  one.  Imprudent  or  ignorant 
legislation  will  bring  suffering  to  many  and  sure  death 
to  some.  How  different  the  situation  from  ours  where 
the  land,  from  one  end  to  the  other,  is  one  happy  field, 
with  a  whole  nation  garnering  smiling  harvests,  or  at 


160 


ENGLISH    POLITICS. 


cheerful  and  contented  work  in  its  shops  and  factories ! 
We  have  an  illimitable  margin  for  legislative  mistake. 
No  blunder  costs  us  either  blood  or  money  that  we  feel. 
We  are  living  like  spendthrifts  on  accumulated  capital. 
This  country  would  have  been  wrecked  a  dozen  times 
within  living  memory  by  its  ignorant  leadership  had  we 
had  the  same  narrow  margin  to  go  on  for  errors  as 
have  the  European  nations.  When  that  time  comes  in 
which  a  foolish  word  may  precipitate  a  war,  an  indis- 
creet tax  raise  a  riot,  or  a  blunder  of  political  economy 
result  in  national  convulsion,  then  we  will  begin  to 
appreciate  the  value  of  education  in  government,  and 
of  the  scholar  in  politics. 

Let  me  recapitulate  briefly,  in  such  form  that  the 
eye  may  take  it  in  at  a  glance,  some  of  the  main  points 
of  this  imperfect  contrast  between  the  involved  politics 
of  the  Old  World  and  the  simple  field  of  the  New.  So 
shall  we  better  see  the  different  manner  of  public  men 
that  the  two  fields  call  for : 


England. 

One-third  of  the  globe  and 
one-fourth  of  its  population. 
The  empire  scattered  over  all 
the  continents. 

A  social  structure  of  many 
classes,  with  unlike  interests 
and  vested  rights. 

An  imperial  government,  ad-          One  simple  form  of  govern- 
ministered  through  the  Parlia-      ment,  with  uniform  machinerv 
ment,    of    one    kingdom,    and 
using  all  known  kinds  of  po- 
litical machinery. 


The  United  States. 

A  moderate  and  contiguous 
territory. 


One  homogeneous  people. 


Distribution  and  control  of 
enormous  government  patron- 
age. Civil  service,  immense 
foreign  service,  military,  naval, 
Church,  titles,  orders,  peerage, 
public  works,  railways,  tele- 
graph, etc. 


Moderate    government    pa- 
tronage. 


COMPARATIVE  POLITICS. 


161 


England. 

Church  and  State, — infinite 
political  and  religious  compli- 
cations. 

Established  and  involved  for- 
eign relations.  Responsibilities 
in  common.  The  nation  only 
a  component  part  of  the  conti- 
nent. 

No  margin  for  political  or 
legislative  mistakes. 

In  the  midst  of  armed  powers 
with  colossal  armies.  Huge 
standing  armies. 

An  increasing  national  debt. 

A  discontented  people.  Emi- 
gration. 

A  people  taxed  to  their  ut- 
most capacity. 

Ignorant  lower  classes. 


The  United  Stctes. 
None. 

None.     Monroe  doctrine. 

Wide  margin. 

No  armies  without  or  within. 

A  decreasing  national  debt. 

A  contented  people.     Immi- 
gration. 

A  generous  margin  for  tax- 
ation. 

A  general  common   educa- 
tion. 


Is  it  any  wonder  that  European  politics  evolve  a 
stronger  order  of  men  than  do  ours?  When  you  meet 
or  hear  or  read  the  English  statesman,  you  feel  the 
immediate  contrast,  and  a  little  study  of  the  country 
shows  how  different  are  all  the  conditions  of  his  life 
and  work. 

The  English  statesman  must  be  an  educated  man, 
for  he  deals  with  educated  forces  and  with  history. 

He  generally  springs  from  the  upper  classes,  and  has 
that  knowledge  of  society  which  comes  from  looking 
from  the  top  down,  and  not  from  the  bottom  up.  So 
far — and  it  strikes  the  American  with  a  strong  impres- 
sion— the  higher  culture  of  Great  Britain  governs  it, 
although  it  has  little  in  common  with  the  mental  or 
religious  life  of  the  body  of  the  people,  and  no  syra- 


162  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

pathy  at  all  with  their  social  life.  But  this  is  changing : 
the  governing  power  is  passing  every  year  farther 
down  the  social  scale. 

The  English  statesman,  finally,  is  mostly  a  man  of 
means.  He  has  leisure  to  study  for  his  work,  and 
independence  to  do  as  he  thinks  best.  Politics  is  not 
with  him  a  means  of  making  a  livelihood. 

LONDON. 


LONDON. 


168 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

WESTMINSTER   ABBEY. 

A  SERMON  IN  STONE — THE  PEACE  OF  THE  GRAVE — How  A 
GRAVE  IN  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY  COMES — A  MONUMENTAL 
EPITOME  OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY — ENGLAND'S  WORSHIP  OF 
COURAGE — OUR  COUNTRY  IN  THE  ABBEY — THE  BIRTH-SPOT 
OF  THE  "SHORTER  CATECHISM" — "THE  ELECT  OF  ENG- 
LAND'S DEAD." 

IT  was  my  good  fortune  to  be  shown  the  treasures 
and  beauties  of  Westminster  Abbey  by  its  scholarly 
and  accomplished  dean,  whose  reputation  and  fame  are 
as  broad  in  all  our  land  and  in  all  the  learned  world 
as  his  own  broad  sympathies  and  the  generous,  gospel 
he  preaches  so  boldly  in  the  first  of  English  churches. 
I  shall  not  attempt  a  picture  of  this  historic  fane,  which 
rises  so  stately  here,  and  which  stands  perhaps  in  still 
statelier  and  more  unattainable  proportions  in  the  imagi- 
nation of  all  read  and  cultured  Americans.  I  will  not 
even  speak  here  of  the  sermons  I  heard  of  two  of  its 
greatest  preachers,  Dean  Stanley  himself  and  Canon 
Farrar,  reserving  the  opportunity  to  touch  on  them  in 
a  later  letter  on  the  London  pulpit,  when  a  larger  com- 
parative hearing  of  its  eminent  men  shall  have  qualified 
me  to  write  of  it  with  more  information  and  judgment. 

I  would  not  write  with  the  rapid  pen  and  flow  of 
newspaper  work  of  Westminster  Abbey,  which  centres 
and  sums  up  in  itself  all  of  English  history,  and  which, 
year  by  year,  gathers  to  its  bosom  the  best  and  greatest 
of  England's  men.  Its  picturing  or  treatment  demands 
long  and  special  study,  and  any  other  treatment  is  an 
injustice  alike  to  the  spot  and  to  the  reader.  I  sup- 
pose, indeed,  that  many  of  my  countrymen  to  whom 

166 


166  LONDON. 

the  venerable  pile  is  familiar  by  painting  ana  engrav- 
ing and  the  allusions  of  literature  may  feel  somewhat 
disappointed  at  the  mention  of  its  name  without  an 
effort  at  its  description.  There  are  those,  however, 
whose  lives  have  been  a  labor  of  love  in  its  service,  and 
who  have  written  fully,  authoritatively,  and  responsibly. 
To  their  works  I  refer  all  across  the  water  who  would 
see  or  know  the  best  that  pen  and  pencil  can  do  for  the 
abbey.  Or,  better  yet,  come  and  see  it. 

"They  sleep  with  their  fathers"  It  was  a  noble  in- 
stinct, worthy  of  illustrating  its  age,  whatever  that  age 
was,  which  first  conceived  the  idea  of  making  the 
churches  of  England  the  tombs  of  its  great  dead,  and 
Westminster  Abbey  has  been  highly  favored  of  history 
and  of  England  in  becoming  the  shrine  of  the  nation. 
"  Let  us  here  praise  famous  men  and  our  fathers  that 
begat  us/'  It  is  the  one  thing  which  I  most  envy  of 
Europe,  this  wealth  of  its  great  men  and  the  noble  and 
beautiful  use  which  it  may  make  and  does  make  of 
their  graves,  by  which  it  carries  down  through  the 
centuries  what  is  best  of  them,  keeping  their  memory 
green  and  imperishable,  but,  more  than  that,  trans- 
fusing, as  it  were,  their  virtues  into  the  daily  life  and 
generation  of  the  hour.  Here  they  lie  in  stately  tombs 
all  over  England,  the  men  who  have  deserved  well  of 
their  country,  who  have  served  their  fellow-men,  who 
have  honored  their  race, — the  soldiers,  the  philanthro- 
pists, the  teachers, — a  lesson,  a  stimulus,  an  inspiration, 
to  all  that  come  after  them.  And  it  is  alike  to  the 
honor  of  England,  and  convincing  evidence  of  her 
moral  vigor  and  integrity  and  of  long  national  life  yet 
to  come,  that  this  recognition,  these  great  honors,  are 
open  to  aU.  Riches  will  not  buy  a  tomb  in  West- 
minster Abbey,  nor  a  life  of  ostentation  and  luxury 
and  display ;  but  its  walls  are  free  to  the  young  lieu- 
tenant, the  young  clergyman,  the  sailor  or  private 
soldier  or  drummer  or  cabin-boy,  who  does  his  duty 
and  dies  in  doing  it. 


WESTMINSTER   AEBLY.  167 

Perhaps  the  distinctive  feature  of  Westminster  Abbey 
to  a  thoughtful  stranger  is  the  wonderful  catholicity 
of  its  tombs.  We  unconsciously  think  of  it  as  an  aris- 
tocratic burial-place  of  the  Established  Church  of  Eng- 
land,— words  of  limitation.  We  find  its  consecrated 
crypts  open  to  humanity, — literally,  to  all  the  world. 
It  has  been  eloquently  called  the  a  temple  of  silence 
and  conciliation/'  and  this  language  is  the  literal  truth. 
Variances  of  faiths,  harsh  judgments  on  personal  lives, 
the  Msperities  of  politics,  the  rancorous  struggles  of 
ambition,  the  bitterness  of 'parties, — all  are  forgotten  in 
its  still  and  passionless  chapels  where  side  by  side  sleep 
friend  and  foe.  The  clangor  of  arms  and  the  damna- 
tory Clauses  of  old  creeds  are  hushed  in  its  hallowed 
and  silent  aisles.  Here,  walking  among  its  graves, 
eloquent  in  their  mute  and  voiceless  expression,  one 
comes  again  and  again  on  tombs  or  monuments  of  men 
almost  startling  you  by  their  associations  or  the  dra- 
matic contrast  of  their  lives  with  their  last  resting- 
place.  You  find  in  a  place  of  honor  "  John  and 
Charles  Wesley,"  their  tablet  legended  "My  parish 
is  the  world," — the  founders  of  Methodism  in  the 
pantheon  of  the  Anglican  Church.  You  pause  in- 
voluntarily at  the  name  of  John  Bradshaw,  the  regi- 
cide judge,  and  president  of  the  fatal  court.  Cromwell 
and  the  two  Charleses  and  General  Monk  sleep  near 
together.  An  English  mob,  in  unhappier  times,  once 
rifled  the  tomb  of  the  Puritan  statesman  and  soldier 
and  scattered  his  dust  and  bones,  but  the  empty  grave 
and  its  inscribed  slab  are  still  there  in  memory  and 
honor  of  the  man.  John  Dryden,  the  Roman  Catho- 
lic; Isaac  Watts,  the  nonconformist;  Mrs.  Siddons, 
the  actress;  Kemble,  the  actor;  Congreve,  the  play- 
writer  of  broad  freedom,  to  speak  gently  near  his  ashes; 
Casaubon,  the  Frenchman;  Spanheim,  the  Swiss; 
Theodoras  Paleologus,  the  Greek  ;  some  of  the  family 
of  Louis  Philippe, — all  lie  peacefully  in  the  resting 
ranks  of  the  noble  army  of  its  dead.  It  might  be  easy 


168  LONDON. 

enough  to  lay  most  of  these  men  here  now  in  our 
better  and  gentler  times,  but  think  of  the  bitter  pas- 
sions of  older  days  when  statesmen  paid  with  their 
heads  for  political  mistakes,  think  of  the  merciless  and 
ignorant  hatred  which  so  short  a  time  ago  passed  for 
religion  and  faith,  and  you  can  begin  to  gauge  the 
strength  of  mind  and  moral  courage  and  nobility  ahead 
of  their  generation  of  the  men  who  dug  some  of  these 
graves,  and  who  recognized  in  advance  of  their  time 
the  peace  of  the  grave. 

Honor  to  whom  honor  is  due.  The  honor  for  this 
great  service  to  humanity  is  due  of  recent  history  ulti- 
mately to  the  dean  of  Westminster  (and  in  earlier  cen- 
turies, I  suppose,  to  the  abbot),  who  is  finally  responsible 
for  every  tomb,  monument,  or  inscription  in  the  church, 
and  whose  veto  can  exclude  anybody,  living  or  dead, 
and  any  tablet.  Let  me  explain  a  moment  how  a  grave 
in  Westminster  comes,  how  the  greatest  honor  England 
can  bestow  is  given.  It  is  so  thoroughly  illustrative  of 
the  interior  of  English  life,  of  a  power  of  tradition  and 
usage  of  which  we  know  absolutely  nothing,  and  which 
we  can  hardly  understand  or  comprehend  at  all,  that 
time  is  not  lost  in  learning  it.  This  great  honor,  for 
which  kings  hope  and  prelates  strive  and  soldiers  die, 
rests  in  law  to-day,  entirely  and  absolutely,  in  the  hands 
of  one  man, — the  dean  of  the  Abbey.  He  can  bury  any 
one  in  the  Abbey  he  pleases  and  he  can  close  its  doors 
against  any  one  he  pleases,  and  there  is  no  power  in  the 
land  that  can  force  or  control  his  judgment  or  discretion 
in  the  matter,  save,  of  course,  the  special  action,  in  a 
special  case,  of  Parliament,  which,  unlike  our  Congress, 
limited  in  its  power  and  field  of  action,  is  "  supreme, 
irresistible,  and  uncontrollable"  in  all  things  and  over 
all  men  in  England.  It  is  one  of  those  instances  con- 
tinually arising  out  of  the  fortuitous  historical  develop- 
ment of  England  in  which  enormous  powers  or  public 
trusts  or  franchises  have  come  into  the  hands  of  some 


WESTMINSTER   ABBEY.  169 

one  man  or  class,  who  are  responsible  for  their  use  only  to 
their  own  honor  and  conscience  and  the  general  sense  of  a 
whole  people,  which  generally  insome  way  enforces  its  own 
will.  And  a  vast  body  of  such  usages,  powers,  vested 
rights,  and  franchises,  ecclesiastical  and  civil  and  poli- 
tical, which  no  one  has  ever  attempted  to  enumerate  or 
define,  and  which  no  one  here  would  define  if  he  could, 
and  of  which  there  is  nowhere  any  written  or  authori- 
tative record,  is  the  Constitution  of  England.  Compare 
this  condition  of  things  with  the  carefully-written  paper 
which  is  our  Constitution,  and  you  have  some  idea  of 
the  organic  differences  of  the  two  Governments,  —  the 
one  a  growth,  the  other  as  yet  a  pure  construction. 
This  fact  is  the  great  and  foundation  difference  between 
English  and  American  politics,  and  the  reason  why 
the  acts  of  one  are  often  no  precedent  for  the  other. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Dean  Stanley,  as  any  strong  man 
would  in  a  similar  position,  feels  bound  to  act  as  the 
prophet  and  interpreter  of  the  English  people  in  the 
discharge  of  this  unique  and  singularly  high  trust,  and 
does,  as  have  the  deans  of  Westminster  before  him. 
While  the  exercise  of  such  sole  and  irresponsible  power 
looks  dangerous  to  the  American  mind,  accustomed  to 
the  careful  distribution  of  responsibilities  and  the  deli- 


cate balance  of  powers,  it  has  many  advantages  apparent 

he  popul 
will,  but  it  is  regulated,  restrained  perhaps  for  a  time, 


at  a  glance.     The  popular  feeling  generally  obtains  its 


by  the  sounder  and  truer  judgment  of  an  educated  and 
cultivated  man,  who  can  also  by  his  power  of  veto  not 
only  prevent  indecorous  burials,  which  might  be  forced 
under  temporary  impulse  or  immature  sentiment,  but 
save  the  building  from  the  profanation  of  crude  inscrip- 
tions, born  of  ignorance,  passion,  or  bad  taste.  Indeed, 
the  present  dean  has  done  an  acknowledged  service, 
not  only  to  England,  but  to  the  English  language,  in 
the  regulation  of  the  mural  legends  and  inscriptions 
which  have  been  placed  in  the  Abbey  during  his  long 
incumbency.  As  a  whole  work  they  show  a  marked 
H  15 


170  LLJDON. 

force,  elegance,  and  good  taste  that  in  future  times 
will  be  noted  and  remembered  to  the  credit  of  our 
century. 

A  stroll  through  the  aisles  and  cloisters  of  this  great 
church  awakens  the  echoes  of  history  and  starts  associa- 
tions almost  at  every  step  which  lead  one  to  the  outer 
confines  of  our  knowledge — political,  religious,  and 
social — of  ourselves. 

Here,  in  the  ancient  Chapter-House,  a  perfectly  cir- 
cular room,  on  rude  stone  benches  continuous  around 
the  wall  in  three  tiers,  without  arms  or  railing  or  rest 
of  any  kind,  for  three  hundred  years  sat  the  Parliaments 
of  England. 

Here,  in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber,  a  modest  kind  of 
vestry  room,  storied  in  legend  as  the  death-scene  of 
Henry  IV.,  juggled  by  a  prophecy,  was  framed  and 
published  "  The  Shorter  Catechism,"  that  famous  com- 
pendium of  Presbyterian  belief.  How  many  of  our 
American  Presbyterians  ever  think  of  the  "  Assembly 
of  Westminster  Divines"  as  assembled  and  working  at 
this  historic  Anglican  centre  ?  ' 

In  this  same  room  sat  and  worked  the  men  who  pro- 
duced the  revision  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  in 
the  form  in  which  it  is  now  used  in  England.  And,  to 
keep  up  the  chain  of  historical  tradition  in  this  line,  the 
modern  "  Committee  for  the  Revision  of  the  Bible"  is 
to-day  sitting  in  this  chamber  invested  with  such  dis- 
tinguished ecclesiastical  associations. 

Here  once  was  the  "  treasury  of  the  kings  of  Eng- 
land," and  here  now  all  the  official  gold  and  silver 
standards  of  the  coin  of  the  realm  are  under  royal  lock 
and  key. 

Here,  too,  opening  out  of  the  dean's  private  study,  is 
the  simple  closet,  now  disused,  but  which  once  served 
for  the  keeping  of  the  crown  jewels  and  regalia,  of 
which  the  dean  and  chapter  are  still  the  legal  and  con- 
structive keepers,  and  which,  on  the  eve  of  the  corona- 


WESTMINSTER  ABBEY. 

tion-day  of  every  monarch,  are  yet  brought  to  the  Abbey 
and  kept  there  over-night,  that  they  may  be  ready  fof 
the  ceremony  of  the  morning  ;  for  the  coronation  of 
every  king  or  queen  of  England  takes  place  in  this 
church  in  front  of  the  Chapel  of  Henry  VII.  These 
jewels  are  the  gorgeous  collection  of  crowns  and  coronets 
and  .sceptres  and  royal  swords  and  gold  and  silver  and 
diamonds  familiar  to  all  who  have  visited  the  Tower  of 
London.  Although  in  the  constructive  keeping  of  the 
Abbey,  these  regal  valuables  are  by  statute  in  the  actual 
charge  as  deposits  of  the  constable  of  the  Tower,  who  is 
supposed  to  have  the  safest  place  in  the  kingdom  either 
for  state  prisoners  or  state  property. 

Here,  in  silent  admonitory  state,  among  the  dusty 
tombs  of  the  sovereigns  who  have  sat  in  it,  stands  the 
coronation  chair.  Under  its  seat,  and  part  of  it  now,  is 
the  famous  "  Stone  of  Scone,"  the  rude  throne  of  the 
old  Scottish  chiefs,  and  which  Scottish  tradition  and 
relic-worship  assert  to  be  the  very  stone  on  which  the 
patriarch  Jacob  rested  his  head  for  a  pillow  when  he 
slept  and  saw  his  glorious  vision  of  power  and  long  life 
and  God's  protection, — "  the  Shepherd  and  the  Stone 
of  Israel." 

Here,  by  a  dark  and  narrow  stairway,  you  ascend  to 
the  small,  rude,  touching  Chapel  of  Henry  V.,  swung 
in  the  air,  the  solid  stone  steps  worn  almost  into  cups 
by  the  feet  of  devoted  worshippers,  who  for  centuries 
have  climbed  its  hard,  bare  way  to  hear  mass  and  pray 
by  the  body  of  their  dead,  loved  king,  the  saddle  and 
the  helmet  of  Agincourt  keeping  solemn  guard  over  the 
warrior  at  rest  forever.  On  the  Continent  I  saw  many 
impressive  altars  in  crypts  and  corners  and  dramatic 
situations,  but  I  remember  none  in  the  unique  position 
of  this  one,  raised  high  into  the  air,  on  a  level  above 
the  main  altar  of  the  church,  and  looking  down  on  all 
around  it. 

But  why  lengthen  out  detached  pictures  where  every 
foot  is  illustrative,  where  every  stone  is  eloquent,  where 


172  LONDON. 

every  aisle  and  corridor  and  archway  is  tremulous  with 
the  memories  of  centuries  ? 

Westminster  Abbey,  with  its  picturesque  Old  English 
architecture,  so  thoroughly  ecclesiastical,  so  rich,  so  ele- 
gant ;  with  its  cloisters  and  venerable  aisles,  shadowy 
with  the  associations  of  legend,  history,  and  tradition ; 
with  its  stately  tombs,  the  grand  records  of  England's 
glories,  learning,  and  faith  ;  with  its  historic  chapels  and 
crumbling  stones  and  time-stained  walls  hung  with 
dropping  banners  or  crowded  with  suggestive  inscrip- 
tions, is  one  of  those  places  which,  like  Niagara,  cannot 
disappoint.  One  need  not  fear  to  see  it  lest  the  sight 
should  dissolve  cherished  dreams  or  beautiful  images. 
No  matter  what  one's  range  of  reading,  no  matter  what 
one's  fund  of  learning,  no  matter  what  one's  sweep  and 
realm  of  imagination,  the  fair  fabric  of  fact  stands  for- 
ever, grander  than  dream  or  fancy,  a  living  sermon  in 
stone. 

I  could  not  help  thinking,  whenever  I  passed  this 
historic  spot,  of  the  riches  with  which  England  is 
dowered  in  this  single  church,  and  my  mind  reverts  to 
the  reflection  again  and  again  as  I  think  how  long, 
long,  long  it  must  be  before  we  can  be  equally  favored. 
It  is  a  foundation  with  which  no  college  can  ever  be 
endowed, — a  perpetual  lesson  and  education.  "  Re- 
member the  days  of  old ;  consider  the  years  of  many 
generations." 

Wandering  through  Westminster  Abbey,  as  in  all  the 
churches  of  England,  there  is  forced  on  one  a  sense  of 
the  great  honors  which  England  pays  to  her  soldiers. 
I  think  that  in  the  cathedrals  and  churches  of  the 
kingdom  a  larger  proportion  of  soldiers  lie  buried  in 
state,  or  have  their  names  recorded  in  memorial  legend 
if  they  have  died  on  foreign  fields,  than  any  one  other 
class,  not  even  excepting  the  clergy,  whose  homes  have 
been  these  buildings,  and  who  themselves  in  former 
times  have  played  so  great  a  part  in  history.  At  every 
step  their  stately  tombs  or  eloquent  tablets  arrest  you ; 


WESTMINSTER  ABBEY.  173 

their  still  stone  effigies  rest  under  the  gathering  duste 
of  every  century ;  "  their  good  swords  rust"  on  every 
wall :  "  their  souls  are  with  the  Lord,  we  trust." 

It  is  this  cultus  of  courage  and  force  which  has  made 
England,  and  it  is  these  honors  which  make  her  men 
soldiers.  While  there  is  something  in  her  present  mil- 
itary organization  and  structure  which  seems  to  produce 
deficient  generalship,  or  prevent  the  development  and 
coming  forward  of  the  real  military  genius  which  is 
surely  in  her  armies,  the  soldierly  qualities  of  the  body 
of  her  officers  are  something  wonderful  and  worthy  of 
the  highest  admiration, — their  fidelity,  their  personal 
chivalry  in  moments  of  danger,  their  perfect  willing- 
ness and  readiness  to  die.  Her  gentlemen  leave  homes 
of  loveliness  and  cultivation  and  refinement  unequalled 
on  the  face  of  the  globe,  and  die  every  year,  every  day, 
almost,  old  and  young,  on  the  plains  of  Asia,  in  the 
forests  of  Africa,  in  fever-swamp  and  desert-sands, 
cheerfully  and  uncomplainingly.  Hardly  a  country 
home  in  England  but  has  its  soldier's  grave  somewhere 
in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth  where  England  is 
pushing  her  imperial  arms.  And  that  all  this  sacrifice 
is  made  in  the  face  of  a  general  sense  of  uneasiness  and 
want  of  confidence  in  the  ability  of  the  directing  power 
makes  it  all  the  more  wonderful.  "Somebody  blun- 
dered" at  Balaklava,  just  as  they  did  at  Braddock's 
Field  and  Bunker's  Hill,  and  before  the  cotton-bales 
of  New  Orleans  in  1812,  and  among  the  kraals  of  Zu- 
luland,  and  in  the  cations  of  Afghanistan  this  fatal 
year ;  but  still  the  British  soldier,  gentleman  and  yeo- 
man, is  ever  ready,  with  his  life  in  his  hand,  to  go  for- 
ward. It  is  these  tombs  in  the  old  cathedrals. 

Passing  from  the  ancient  abbots'  palace,  now  the 
dwelling  of  the  dean,  by  private  entrance  to  the  church, 
just  before  we  entered  the  transept  of  the  main  build- 
ing Dean  Stanley,  to  whom  my  presence  started  recol- 
lections of  Philadelphia,  said,  "  Stop  a  moment ;  I  want 

16* 


174  LONDON. 

to  show  you  something  that  will  remind  you  of  home," 
and  ascending  by  a  side  entry  three  narrow  steps,  into 
a  little  chapel  shut  off  by  an  open  railing  from  public 
entrance,  we  stood  suddenly  before  the  handsome  me- 
morial window  of  Mr.  Chi  Ids  to  the  two  English  poets, 
— a  grand  blaze  of  illumination,  covering  almost  an 
entire  wall  of  the  chapel.  It  is  a  beautiful  and  costly 
work  of  art,  in  the  conventional  ecclesiastical  style  of 
glass-painting,  rich  and  impressive. 

It  is  the  usage  in  the  Abbey  to  inscribe  on  all  monu- 
ments the  incident  of  their  erection,  and  the  story  of 
this  one  is  very  simply  and  frankly  told  in  a  single  line: 

"  D.  D.*  Oeorgius  Gulielmua  Childs.     Cims  Americanus." 

This  is  the  first  appearance  of  our  country  in  the  his- 
toric Abbey.  There  are  a  few  other  American  names, — 
some  loyal  refugees  in  the  war  of  1776-83,  some  colo- 
nial worthies,  some  British  soldiers  killed  in  the  Revo- 
lution and  French  wars, — but  this  is  the  only  inscription 
which  distinctly  places  the  new  nation  of  "  the  United 
States  of  America"  in  the  monumental  archives  of 
Westminster. 
LONDON. 


*  Donum  dedit. 


THE  LONDON  PULPIT. 


CHAPTER    XX. 

THE   LONDON   PULPIT. 

DEAN  STANLEY  IN  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY  —  CANON  FARRAR  Al 
ST.  MARGARET'S  —  ST.  PAUL'S  CATHEDRAL  —  CARDINAL 
MANNING  IN  THE  PRO-CATHEDRAL  AT  KENSINGTON  —  REV. 
MR.  HAWEIS  AT  MARYLEBONE  —  THE  ENGLISH  CLERGY  AS 
PUBLIC  MEN. 

To  an  American  imagination  there  is  no  preacher  in 
all  the  world  who  has  a  grander  pulpit  than  he  who 
speaks  in  Westminster  Abbey.  It  is  an  inspiration  to 
stand  there.  The  scene  of  an  ordinary  afternoon  ser- 
vice is  itself  a  dramatic  one.  From  the  little  pulpit  at 
the  corner  of  the  transept  the  preacher  sees  a  living  sea 
of  heads  stretching  out  every  broad  aisle  as  far  as  the 
voice  will  reach.  The  wave  of  his  audience  overflows 
even  the  generous  provision  of  the  seats  and  surges  up 
and  over  the  tombs  of  the  historic  dead.  On  the  con- 
fines of  the  seated  congregation  throng  dark  clouds  of 
standing  listeners,  moving  restlessly  for  some  coign  of 
vantage,  pressing  forward  anxiously  and  expectant  as 
when  some  great  speech  is  to  be  delivered  in  a  Parlia- 
ment. This,  at  least,  is  the  scene  which  every  Sunday 
greets  the  eye  of  Dean  Stanley,  who  is  one  of  the  most 
popular  preachers  in  London.  This  popularity  comes 
solely,  too,  from  the  spirit  and  tone  of  his  sermons,  for 
their  delivery  breaks  their  effect  rather  than  adds  to  it. 
The  dean  reads  his  sermons,  which  is  the  murder  of  ora- 
tory, and  few  voices  if  any  can  reach  the  outer  edges  of 
the  vast  audience  which  gathers  in  the  spacious  gray- 
stone  halls  of  the  nave  and  transept.  It  is  the  ex- 
quisite English  of  these  sermons  and  their  gentle  cath- 
olic spirit  which  draws  all  London  and  all  the  world  of 
travel  to  hear  them.  Dean  Stanley's  spare  form 


176  LONDON. 

kindly  features  are  so  well  known  now  in  our  country 
that  the  American  traveller  does  not  feel  as  a  stranger 
when  on  entering  the  church  he  sees  the  familiar  face 
in  the  reading-desk  or  pulpit. 

London  is  the  vortex  of  the  world,  Westminster  ia 
the  heart  of  London,  and  its  preacher  is  so  thoroughly 
in  all  the  currents  of  modern  life  that  one  loses  in  every 
sermon  of  Dean  Stanley's  the  more  delicate  touches,  the 
keener  allusions, — the  more  eifective  because  so  deftly 
veiled, — if  he  is  not  thoroughly  familiar  with  all 
the  higher  movements  of  the  hour.  Here  in  a  very 
striking  sense  "the  parish  is  the  world,"  and  Dean 
Stanley  has  all  the  tact  of  a  born  journalist  in  harness- 
ing the  events  of  each  day  to  the  chariot  of  his  work. 

When  I  first  heard  him  the  text  was  a  clause  of  Scrip- 
ture,— "the  service  of  the  sanctuary."  The  theme,  how- 
ever, was  strictly  "  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,"  its 
historic  associations  and  growth,  its  spirit,  and  mainly 
and  practically  the  question  of  the  expediency  or  pro- 
priety of  its  emendation  now.  However  scholarly  or 
critical  the  treatment  of  this  subject, — and  this  sermon 
was  both, — the  theme,  in  such  a  temple  and  before  a 
Church-of-England  audience,  must  of  necessity  involve 
panegyric,  and  that  it  might  not  lead  to  narrowing 
opinion  or  the  nurture  of  prejudice  the  preacher  with 
fine  tact  prefaced  his  discourse  by  recalling  as  appro- 
priate to  the  subject  and  the  day  that  this  very  Sunday 
was  the  anniversary  of  that  historic  occasion  when  the 
service  of  the  Established  Church  of  England  was  read 
for  the  first  time  and  the  last  time  in  the  national 
Church  of  Scotland.  Then,  in  perfectly  impartial  and 
dispassionate  words  and  in  a  tone  and  voice  colorless  of 
the  slightest  trace  of  feeling  or  judgment,  he  related 
the  story  of  that  famous  scene  in  Edinboro'  when  Janet 
Geddes  threw  the  footstool  at  the  dean  of  Edinboro's 
head  just  as  he  began  to  read  the  collect  for  the  day, — 
the  same  collect  in  which  we- had  all  joined  that  very 
hour, — the  uproar  and  confusion,  the  broken  and  ended 


THE  LONDON  PULPIT.  177 

service,  and  the  historical  consequences  of  the  event. 
That  picture,  drawn  so  calmly,  all  the  passions  of  the 
time  faded  out  with  the  years,  as  lifeless  and  departed 
as  if  veritably  entombed  with  the  dead  of  centuries 
that  lay  all  around  us,  made  its  own  argument.  The 
audience  stood  at  once  on  the  catholic  plane  of  the 
preacher. 

On  the  question  of  amendment  now — the  practical 
body  of  the  discourse — the  dean  was  direct  and  ex- 
plicit. Noble  as  was  the  book,  grand  as  were  its  asso- 
ciations, it  was  a  living  growth  and  must  change.  It 
had  defects,  the  legacies  of  times  not  so  fortunate  or 
blessed  with  light  as  ours,  and  they  should  be  amended; 
the  sooner  the  better.  The  specific  changes  suggested 
and  pointed  out  as  desirable  were  one  and  all  in  th" 
line  of  broadening  the  Church  and  opening  wide  its 
doors, — wide  and  loving  as  the  arms  of  its  Founder. 
Among  those  instanced  were  the  expurgation  of  the 
sweeping  damnatory  clauses  of  the  Athnnasian  Creod  ; 
also  the  abolition  of  that  rubric  which  forbids  the  burial 
prayers  of  t\\e  Church  to  be  read  over  the  body  "of  a 
man  of  the  purest  and  most  blameless  life  if  he  be- 
longed, say,  to  that  most  excellent  and  pious  people, 
the  Friends,  instead  of  the  Established  Church,"  or 
"even  over  the  most  innocent  of  little  children,  those 
little  children  of  whom  Christ  Himself  said,  'Of  such 
is  the  kingdom  of  heaven."  Another  change  urged 
was  the  wording  of  those  special  prayers  for  rain  which 
seem  to  assume  that  the  favors  of  nature  are  sent  upon 
the  just  and  its  disfavors  upon  the  unjust,  contrary  to 
the  now  clearly  acknowledged  teachings  of  the  New 
Testament. 

In  Westminster  Abbey  the  service  is  rather  a  medium 
between  the  High  Church  intoning  of  England  and  the 
severely  plain  enunciation  demanded  with  us.  When 
it  was  over  and  the  sermon  finished  the  congregation 
slowly  dispersed,  not  with  a  rush  to  the  streets,  but 
lingering  kindly  and  lovingly  in  the  cool  gray  shades 


78  LONDON. 

of  the  tombs  and  arched  aisles,  and  there  were  no  im- 
patient vergers  or  janitors  hanging  around  to  hustle  out 
the  last  lingerers  and  close  inhospitable  doors. 

In  the  yard  of  Westminster  Abbey,  a  solid  pavement 
of  flat  tombs,  stands  the  parish  church  of  St.  Margaret. 
St.  Margaret's  Parisli  is  the  first  parish  in  the  kingdom, 
for  in  its  bounds  rise  both  Houses  of  Parliament,  and, 
I  think,  the  official  residences  of  all  the  government. 
The  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons,  the  Speaker  of 
the  House  of  Lords,  and  -most  of  the  great  officials  of 
state  are  always  members  of  this  parish.  Until  within 
a  very  few  years  the  House  of  Commons  was  accus- 
tomed to  attend  this  church  in  state,  as  provided  in  the 
Prayer-book. 

Westminster  Abbey,  although  it  fills  so  large  a  space 
in  London  in  American  imagination,  has  no  territorial 
jurisdiction.  An  abbey  is  something  to  which  we  have 
no  equivalent  iii  Protestant  America.  It  is  a  college  of 
priests, — a  point  or  foundation  purely  for  worship  of 
God,  unclogged  by  any  congregational  cares  or  limita- 
tions. It  has  no  congregation  in  our  sense.  There  is 
regular  service  and  it  is -free  to  all,  but  it  goes  on 
whether  any  persons  from  outside  come  or  not. 

Dr.  F.  W.  Farrar,  whose  name  as  a  popular  author 
is  so  familiar  on  both  sides  of  the  sea,  is  the  rector  or 
pastor  of  St.  Margaret's,  and  he  is  so  by  virtue  of  holding 
a  canonry  in  Westminster  Abbey.  St.  Margaret's,  too, 
is  a  stimulating  house  in  which  to  preach.  It  is  part 
of  the  fabric  of  the  English  Constitution;  the  strongest 
legislation  in  the  world  throbs  at  its  very  side,  and  the 
congregation  must  always  hold  some  of  the  ablest  and 
most  influential  men  living.  Add  to  this  that  there  is 
not  a  Sunday  but  when,  in  addition  to  the  permanent 
congregation,  there  are  to  be  found  among  the  hearers 
distinguished  men  of  all  peoples, — statesmen,  thinkers, 
writers,  soldiers, — who  come  as  strangers  and  travellers, 
unknown  and  unseen,  but  none  the  less  critical  and  ob- 


THE  LONDON  PULPIT.  179 

serving.  In  fact,  they  are  making  up  the  verdict  of  the 
world. 

The  interior  of  St.  Margaret's  is  very  plain.  It  was 
the  ordinary  rectangular  American  church  or  meeting- 
house, with  four  white  walls,  and  the  entire  floor  filled 
with  plain  wooden  high-backed  pews.  Fine  stained- 
glass  windows  and  some  historic  names  graven  on  mural 
tablets, — Sir  Walter  Raleigh  lies  in  the  chancel, — relieve 
the  room  from  absolute  sameness  and  furnish  that  rest 
to  the  eye  which  one  finds  so  grateful  in  the  churches 
of  Europe,  and  which  he  so  soon  learns  to  look  for. 

The  conduct  of  the  service  was  correspondingly 
simple.  Both  the  prayers  and  the  psalms  were  read  so 
that  each  word  was  intelligible.  There  was  neither  in- 
toning nor  drawling.  Going  to  St.  Margaret's  with  the 
consciousness  that  I  was  seeing  one  of  the  high-places 
of  the  Church  of  England,  it  was  something  of  a  sur- 
prise to  hear  the  first  hymn  given  out, — 

"Come  let  us  join  our  cheerful  songs 
With  angels  round  the  throne," 

and  to  have  it  followed  by — 

"  How  sweet  the  name  of  Jesus  sounds 
In  a  believer's  ear  I" 

two  hymns  in  common  use  by  every  denomination  in 
the  United  States.  And  both  were  sung  to  airs  famil- 
iar in  all  .Presbyterian  and  Congregational  churches, 
and  the  singing  was  by  the  entire  congregation. 

Dr.  Farrar,  a  dark,  brown -faced  man  with  a  pleasant 
countenance,  preached  from  Galatians,  the  first  verse  of 
the  fifth  chapter, — "the  liberty  with  which  Christ  hath 
made  us  free."  It  was  the  broadest  of  broad-church 
sermons,  the  special  dangers  to  Christian  freedom 
from  the  side  of  ecclesiastical  organization  being  the 
drift  of  the  discourse,  and  at  times  the  argument  seemed 
to  press  certain  practical  applications  on  home  issues 
not  immediately  discernible  to  a  stranger.  I  could 


180  LONDON. 

only  quote  from  recollection,  and  should  be  afraid  to 
attempt  for  fear  of  being  charged  with  misquotation 
but  it  is  sufficient  to  say  that  Canon  Farrar  was  as 
latitudinarian  as  St.  Paul  himself,  and  would  probably 
have  been  pronounced  unorthodox  on  the  Church  ques- 
tion from  many  a  Baptist,  Lutheran,  or  Presbyterian 
pulpit  in  the  United  States.  He  went  the  length  of 
accepting  literally  the  sayings  of  the  New  Testament, 
translating  them  into  the  language  and  applying  them 
to  the  situation  of  the  day.  He  is  out  and  out  a 
disciple  of  St.  Paul.  Indeed,  it  is  observable  how 
thoroughly  Pauline  preaching  is  the  rule  in  the  Church 
of  England,  which  is  suffering  a  kind  of  recoil  from 
theological  disputation,  and  to-day  sees  the  old  doctrinal 
lines  broken  at  many  a  point  without  apparently  think- 
ing of  even  an  effort  to  defend  them. 

I  have  mentioned  that  this  sermon  seemed  to  be 
bearing  on  some  home  question  of  church  government 
or  policy  not  entirely  clear  to  a  passing  visitor.  It  is 
worthy  of  remark  that  nearly  every  sermon  I  heard  in 
London  bore  directly  on  some  imminent  matter, — some 
great  question  of  modern  thought  or  action, — and  that 
the  preacher  spoke  as  a  lawyer  before  a  bench  of  judges 
or  a  jury  does,  directly  to  the  point,  with  the  view  of 
convincing  some  person  or  persons  on  a  given  issue  and 
at  that  time. 

I  was  not  fortunate  enough  to  hear  Canon  Liddon, 
of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  who  is  ranked  by  many  at  the 
head  of  the  London  pulpit  in  the  way  of  combining 
both  scholarship  and  popular  oratorical  power.  He 
was  sick  and  off  duty  during  my  three  visits  to  London. 

St.  Paul's,  although  dwarfed  in  American  interest  by 
Westminster  Abbey,  is  to  Englishmen  probably  the 
greater  church  of  the  two,  and  it  is  always  and  for  any 
one  a  most  impressive  house  of  worship.  It  is  the 
cathedral  church  of  the  diocese  of  London  and  thr 
most  prominent  building  in  all  that  huge  city,  being  ir 


THE  LONDON  PULPIT.  Igl 

size  the  third  largest  church  in  Christendom.  It  is  the 
great  monument  of  its  architect,  Sir  Christopher  Wren 
who  got  $1000  a  year  for  building  it.  The  bishop  of 
London  now  gets  $50,000  a  year.  The  dean  of  St. 
Paul's  also  now  receives  $10,000  a  year,  and  a  staff  of 
canons  $5000  a  year  each,  for  conducting  service  in  it. 
Then  there  are  also  archdeacons,  prebendaries,  minor 
canons,  and  the  usual  equipment  of  lesser  officers, — chan- 
cellor, register,  and  clerks  of  many  kinds. 

St.  Paul's  Cathedral  stands  now  right  in  the  heart  of 
business  London.  Its  once  cloistered  walks  are  busy 
marts,  and  it  is  a  dramatic  surprise  to  pass  in  a  few  steps 
almost,  out  of  the  Bank  of  England,  heated,  panting 
with  the  pulses  of  the  trade  of  the  world,  into  the  cool, 
calm  shades  of  a  still  cathedral  where  the  service  of 
worship  is  nearly  always  in  progress.  There  are,  I 
think,  four  services  every  day,  and  perhaps  more  on 
Sunday,  but  it  would  be,  it  struck  me,  a  glorious  asser- 
tion of  religious  life  if  they  were  made  continuous  day 
and  night,  and  this  magnificent  temple,  right  in  the 
heart  of  the  dominion  of  Mammon  in  this  world,  were 
constituted  a  place  where  literally  "prayer  is  made  to 
God  without  ceasing."  This  idea  flashed  on  me  like  a 
wave  of  emotion  within  ten  minutes  after  I  first  entered 
the  great  cathedral.  I  suggested  it  afterwards  to  an 
English  clergyman,  but  could  not  impart  to  him  my 
enthusiasm.  He  thought  it  would  "  kill  the  clergy." 
I  would  say,  "  Kill  them."  If  men  can  die  for  their 
country  on  a  desolate  and  barren  battle-field,  why  not  for 
the  glory  of  God  in  a  comfortable  cathedral  ? 

The  service  of  St.  Paul's  is  a  great  work  of  art  con- 
ducted with  all  the  highest  accessories  of  music  and 
ecclesiastical  stage  effect.  It  was  entirely  intoned,  and 
not  a  word  of  the  priest  was  intelligible,  at  least  to  a 
non-English  stranger.  For  one  not  accustomed  to  the 
traditional  stage  delivery  of  the  English  altar  the  tongue 
might  just  as  well  have  been  Latin  or  Hebrew.  The 
preacher  and  reader,  however,  were  perfectly  heard. 

16 


182  LONDON. 

The  ablest  sermon  I  heard  in  St.  Paul's  was  by  the 
senior  canon,  Rev.  Mr.  Gregory.  The  bishop  of  the 
diocese  had  ordered  prayers  for  good  weather  in  all  the 
churches,  and  Canon  Gregory  on  this  day  preached  to 
the  order,  taking  for  his  theme  the  whole  question  of 
prayer  for  the  specific  direction  or  suspension  of  the  laws 
of  nature.  The  marked  feature  of  this  sermon  was  the 
extreme  candor  and  fairness  with  which  the  preacher 
stated  the  position  of  his  opponents  on  this  matter  in 
all  its  strength,  without  the  least  disposition  to  contort 
it  or  to  blink  the  danger.  He  fairly  admitted  that  tho 
ground  had  shifted  since  the  days  of  mediaeval  thought, 
and  made  not  the  least  attempt  to  hold  it  by  appeals  to 
transmitted  ignorance  or  prejudice,  but  grappled  with 
the  issue  in  a  way  that  showed  a  masterly  study  of  the 
whole  range  of  modern  reading.  It  was  the  work  of  a 
strong  man  who  knew  there  was  a  fight  ahead  and  was 
ready  for  it. 

Like  nearly  all  English  clergymen,  Canon  Gregory 
preaches  with  a  vigor,  physical-  and  intellectual,  which 
tells  of  the  broad  foundation  of  the  university  and  of 
generous  and  conscientious  care  of  the  body  from  youth 
upwards.  He  is  a  large  man,  of  hearty  address  and 
that  rare  honesty  of  expression  and  manner  that  in- 
spires immediate  confidence  and  trust.  The  close  of 
St.  Paul's,  in  which  these  canons  live  in  low-roorned  old- 
fashioned  houses,  with  wrought-iron  extinguishers  and 
hooks  for  the  link-boys'  torches  yet  attached  to  their  doors, 
is  a  most  quaint  old  place  which  I  despair  of  describing 
to  those  who  have  not  seen  it  or  something  like  it,  but 
it  is  one  of  the  best  living  reminiscences  of  Old  London. 
It  is  in  such  out-of-the-way  places  not  in  the  guide- 
books, or  out  of  the  reach  of  tourist  curiosity,  that  one 
gots  his  freshest  and  best  conception  of  past  England. 
A.n  old  castle  with  the  family  still  in  it,  their  comfort- 
able e  very-day  life  blending  through  the  slow  succes- 
sion of  centuries  with  the  half-barbaric  magnificence  of 
their  ancestors,  a  dark  gray  close  with  a  deanery  full  of 


THE  LONDON  PULPIT.  183 

girls  inheriting  the  substantial  club  comforts  of  a  line 
of  dead  abbots  and  their  bachelor  monks,  are  worth  all 
the  routine  ruins  and  well-trodden  ivy  walls  in  the 
island. 

I  first  heard  of  the  Rev.  Charles  Haweis  many  years 
ago,  when  I  found  his  "  Music  and  Morals"  in  the 
meagre  hut  of  a  miner  in  the  Rocky  Mountains  of 
Colorado,  into  which  I  had  been  driven  by  stress  of 
weather  to  pass  the  night,  and  the  singular  contrast  of 
the  incident  kept  his  name  fixed  in  my  attention.  In 
London,  Mr.  Haweis  is  a  very  popular  preacher,  and 
his  church  rather  a  fashionable  one  in  its  own  stratum 
of  society. 

St.  James  of  Marylebone  is  an  old-fashioned  church 
building  such  as  you  see  yet  in  old  parts  of  Philadel- 
phia and  in  many  of  the  interior  towns  of  Maryland 
and  Pennsylvania.  The  old  architectural  interior  has 
been  religiously  preserved, — low,  long  galleries,  quaint 
pillars,  high  wooden  pews, — but  all  the  plain  walls  and 
woodwork  are  now  done  over  in  the  glory  of  modern 
decorative  effect,  in  gray  and  red  and  gold  and  glass. 
Indeed,  it  rather  looks  MS  if  an  energetic  :esthetie  club 
had  been  let  loose  on  all  the  walls  and  wooden  fronts. 
The  rear  end  of  the  church,  which  serves  as  a  back- 
ground for  the  altar,  looks  something  like  a  huge  il- 
luminated title-page,  so  elaborate  is  it  in  pictured  glass 
and  gold  and  neutral-tinted  panels,  all  blazoned  over 
with  ecclesiastical  and  religious  symbols.  The  altar 
itself  was  a  narrow  ledge  against  the  base  of  the  great 
window.  On  it  rested  an  elaborate  cross  in  opaque 
glass  or  some  similar  material  revealing  itself  very  pret- 
tily with  a  kind  of  subdued  brilliancy  out  of  a  wealth 
of  flowers.  Above  the  ledge  arose  a  large  rigid  old 
fashioned  square  arch  or  triangle,  thus:  A.  Inside  of 
the  arch  was  a  perfect  circle  of  scroll-work  of  some  kind ; 
inside  of  the  circle  a  Greek  cross,  its  four  even  arms 
touching  the  circumference,  while  its  centre  was  a  great 


184  LONDON. 

garnet-colored  stone  or  piece  of  glass,  which  burned  or 
glittered  like  a  fiery  eye,  and  more  01  less  recalled  the 
Shah  of  Persia  or  one's  boyhood  recollections  of  the 
"Arabian  Nights." 

The  congregation  was  apparently  of  the  middle  class, 
wealthy,  comfortable,  and  uneducated.  It  was  the 
most  congregational  service,  however,  I  have  ever  seen. 
The  Confession,  Lord's  Prayer,  Creed,  and  most  of  the 
prayers  were  said  by  the  whole  people  so  well  and 
spiritedly  that  the  voice  of  the  priest  was  never  heard  at 
all  save  when  he  sounded  the  leading  note.  The  psalms 
of  the  day  and  the  hymns  were  sung  by  the  people, 
who  carried  on  the  whole  service.  In  fact,  the  whole 
congregation  seemed  one  body,  a  living  being  throbbing 
and  pulsating  with  worship.  It  was  a  congregation 
very  easy  and  pleasant  to  preach  to,  if  one  was  its 
choice.  It  was  harmonious,  very  earnest,  and  entirely 
satisfied  with  itself.  Without  knowing  anything  of 
them,  I  should  venture  the  assertion  that  the  body  of 
tlie  people  are  of  the  same  class  of  society  and  have  a 
high  opinion  of  their  own  "  culture." 

Mr.  Haweis  is  a  good  specimen  of  the  popular 
preacher  toned  down  by  the  social  limitations  of  the 
Church  of  England.  He  has  all  the  elements  of  a 
stump-speaker,  but  has  never  learned  to  sink  the  pulpit 
below  the  level  of  the  stump,  which  is  the  usual  work 
of  an  American  sensational  preacher.  Mr.  Haweis 
does  not  even  approach  this,  for  neither  his  education 
nor  Mary] ebone  would  suffer  it ;  but  somehow  his  man- 
ner suggests  that  under  less  fortunate  conditions  of  cul- 
tivation he  might  have  drifted  that  way.  He  has  the 
best  elements  and  force  of  the  sensational  preacher, 
without  his  vulgarity.  In  person  Mr.  Haweis  is  a  dark, 
average-sized  man,  with  black  side- whiskers,  and  of  a 
sanguine,  bilious-looking  temperament  His  elocution 
is  very  English,  apologetic,  and  with  a  great  deal  of 
hem-ing  and  haw-ing  and  aw-ing.  His  trr.es  are  also 
somewhat  nasal,  which  is  not  English 


THE  LONDON  PULPIT.  135 

The  Roman  Catholic  pro-cathedral,  which  is  said  tc 
be  a  kind  of  provisional  tabernacle  until  the  Church 
can  make  good  its  claim  to  St.  Paul's  or  Westminster, 
is  situated  away  out  on  the  Kensington  road,  one-half 
mile  by  underground  railway  from  Portland  Place,  and 
the  aristocratic  section  of  which  that  place  is  the  centre. 
It  is  a  fairly  capacious  but  very  plain  church,  with 
pews,  little  decoration  in  the  way  of  planting  and  stat- 
uary, and  looking  not  at  all  in  ks  interior  like  the  Ro- 
man churches  of  Ireland  and  Italy.  Here  I  went  to 
hear  Henry  Edward,  Cardinal  Manning,  Archbishop 
of  Westminster. 

Cardinal  Manning  is  a  toll,  spare  man,  of  feeble 
frame,  with  an  emaciated  and  almost  pallid  face,  ren- 
dered still  more  wan  by  hungry,  cavernous  eyes, — the 
true  ecclesiastical  type.  He  called  up  at  once  the  polit- 
ical ecclesiastic  of  the  sixteenth  century.  His  wasted 
features  are  refined,  scholarly,  and  intellectual.  A 
movable  scalp,  causing  his  red  skull-cap  to  move  up 
and  down,  imparts  rather  a  sinister  effect  and  mars  the 
general  impression  of  his  appearance.  The  thin  figure 
and  meagre,  fleshless  face  suggest  the  mediaeval  an- 
chorite, the  sharp,  severe  outlines  the  Middle-Age  in- 
quisitor, a  man  who  would  be  honestly  cruel, — cruel  to 
himself  as  well  as  to  others. 

And  Cardinal  Manning  has  been  cruel  to  himself, 
mercilessly  honest  to  his  convictions,'  in  leaving  the 
green  pastures  and  pleasant  waters  of  the  Established 
Church  of  England  for  the  arid  and  unintellectual 
wastes  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  Britain. 
There  was  no  lash  ion  at  the  pro-cathedral,  no  good  so- 
ciety, no  university,  no  influence,  no  cultivation.  There 
were  ignorant,  new-made  wealth  and  dull  credulity  and 
heavy  mediocrity,  but  nothing  better.  It  was  a  real 
sacrifice  of  the  highest  kind  for  this  cultivated,  learned, 
able  man,  the  flo\ver  of  English  education,  to  be  there. 

Cardinal  Manning's  sermon,  as  indeed  was  to  be 
expected,  was  masterly  and  powerful.  It  was  very 

16* 


186  LONDON. 

earnest,  and  full  of  the  wisdom  of  an  old  and  wis« 
man.  It  was  severely  plain  in  language  and  often 
very  practical,  but  the  whole  interior  train  of  thought 
and  argument  was  entirely  above  the  very  inferior  con- 
gregation which  listened  to  it.  They  undoubtedly  got 
good  from  it,  but  they  never  knew  the  perfection  of 
the  work.  Indeed,  it  sometimes  seemed  to  me  that  the 
great  preacher  was  preaching  two  sermons  simulta- 
neously,— one  in  the  spirit  (o  himself  and  any  stray 
hearer  that  chanced  to  drop  in,  and  another  in  the 
flesh  of  the  word  to  the  pitiful  audience  of  the  pro- 
cathedral.  I  tli ink  no  educated  man  could  have  wit- 
nessed this  scene  without  regret,  no  matter  how  widely 
he  might  have  differed  from  every  word  and  conclusion 
of  the  ex- fellow  of  Oxford.  The  text  of  the  sermon 
was  the  words,  "  Gold,  frankincense,  and  myrrh,"  the 
subject,  "Offering/' — the  dedication  of  everything  to 
God ;  one's  whole  self  in  every  part,  estate,  body, 
mind.  The  treatment  revealed  a  great  deal  of  patristic 
reading,  and  the  language  recalled  at  times  the  late  papal 
syllabus,  "  The  characteristic  of  the  XIX.  century  is 
mental  aberration,"  and  the  remedy  of  the  cardinal  was 
simple  and  mechanical :  Offer  your  mind  as  a  sacrifice 
to  God, — i.e.,  to  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. 

Cardinal  Manning's  delivery  is  very  defective,  and 
keeps  one  on  the  stretch  all  the  time.  Owing  to  loss 
of  teeth,  perhaps,  one  word  out  of  every  eight  or  ten 
drops  out  entirely,  and,  as  his  sermons  are  of  that  un- 
usual order  that  one  wants  to  hear  every  word  of  them, 
the  loss  is  very  serious.  In  speaking  Cardinal  Man- 
ning clenched  the  rail  of  the  pulpit-box  with  both  his 
pallid  fists,  like  an  English  statesman  on  the  hustings, 
and  ejected  rather  than  delivered  his  words,  as  if  half 
embarrassed.  He  wore  a  scarlet  cap  and  scarlet  robe. 
In  quoting  Latin,  it  was  rather  significant  that  he  used 
the  continental  pronunciation,  abandoning  the  English 
system  of  his  own  university  training. 

The  pro-cathedral   is  not  the  first   Roman  Catholic 


THE  LONDON  PULPIT.  187 

church  in  London.  That  is  St.  George's  Cathedral, 
across  the  river  from  Westminster  bridge.  In  this 
pro-cathedral,  when  Cardinal  Manning  preached,  the 
pews  were  guarded  and  a  sixpence  demanded  for  an 
ordinary  seat,  a  shilling  for  the  better  ones.  The  ser- 
mon was  preached  for  a  charity,  and  the  money  thus 
secured  went  to  it  in  addition  to  the  special  collection 
taken  up.  The  force  of  priests  at  the  altar  was  not 
strong.  Mass  was  more  reverently  gone  through  than 
in  the  perfunctory  Italian  style,  but  with  less  regard 
to  the  scenic  proprieties,  and  with  an  utter  want  of 
the  sense  of  dress  and  dfapery  that  was  thoroughly 
English. 

The  -preachers  with  a  Transatlantic  fame  of  othei 
churches  were  not  as  conspicuous  in  the  winter  of 
1879-80  as  some  years  before.  Irving,  the  leader  of 
the  famous  apostolic  movement,  was  dead.  Spurgeon 
was  in  Italy  in  search  of  health,  perhaps  of  life.  The 
great  orator  of  the  Congregational ist  denomination  was 
in  the  divorce  court.  And  so  it  happens  that  the  view 
of  this  letter  is  confined  to  the  Roman  and  English 
State- Churches. 

In  London  the  pulpit  is  a  much  stronger  social  force 
than  in  any  city  in  our  country,  and  the  men  who  fill  it 
take  a  much  greater  and  more  influential  share  in  the 
general  public  life.  There  are  reasons  in  the  structure 
of  English  society  for  this. 

The  bishops  sit  in  Parliament,  and  thus  have  a  direct 
political  influence.  Again,  the  entire  body  of  the 
clergy  is  a  definite  class,  entitled  always  to  be  heard  in 
a  society  which  rests  on  a  basis  of  class  and  is  itself 
only  a  federation  of  many  class-interests.  This  priestly 
class,  in  its  highest  rank  too,  reaches  into  the  peerage 
It  requires  a  personal  knowledge  of  English  life  tc 
know  how  much  this  means. 

Once  more,  the  English  clergy  have  a  better  and 
happier  education  than  the  main  body  of  ours,  which, 


188  LONDON. 

indeed,  they  share  with  the  leaders  of  thought  of  all 
England,  but  it  works  out  special  advantages  in  their 
profession.  Owing  to  a  greater  breadth  of  learning, 
and  as  its  resultant  a  larger  freedom  of  thought  and  ex- 
pression, many  of  the  great  intellectual  and  social  ques- 
tions which  are  fought  outside  of  the  Church  with  us 
are  fought  inside  of  it  here.  Then  the  good  fortune  of 
a  university  education  in  England  is  a  great  blessing 
which  widens  with  the  years.  All  the  best  life  of  Eng- 
land goes  to  school  either  at  Cambridge  or  Oxford. 
Until  more  recent  years  this  has  been  the  case  almost 
without  exception.  The  graduates  of  these  two  univer- 
sities divided  among  themselves  all  England,  and  have 
done  so  for  hundreds  of  years.  Their  alumni  have 
been  simply  a  club  formed  of  the  leaders  in  the  state, 
in  the  Church,  in  society,  in  the  army,  at  the  bar. 
England  is  a  small  place,  where  men  constantly  meet 
one  another.  The  young  university  clergyman  starts 
with  an  acquaintance  embracing  all  that  is  best  in  the 
kingdom,  and  that  will  last  for  life  if  he  is  worthy  of 
it.  He  has,  therefore,  a  much  more  intimate  associa- 
tion with  the  whole  life  of  the  nation  than  the  American 
clergyman,  who  starts  from  the  first  in  the  seclusion  of 
a  denominational  college  and  further  segregates  himself 
by  finishing  his  education  in  an  admittedly  sectarian 
theological  school. 

Finally,  the  Established  Church  itself  is  an  alliance 
with  the  politics  and  good  society  of  the  kingdom,  and 
its  leaders  have  necessarily  intimate  relations  with  and 
responsibilities  to  these  interests. 

There  is  another  solid  reason  why  the  clergy  of  Lon- 
don should  stand  to  the  front  of  their  calling.  All 
England  is  behind  them.  The  men  who  preach  in  St. 
Paul's  and  Westminster,  at  Smithfield  or  the  Temple, 
and  who  live  at  Lambeth  Palace,  would  be  less  than 
mortal  did  they  not  draw  strength  and  inspiration  from 
the  historic  theatre  of  their  work. 


THE  PLAY  AND    THE   THEATRE.  189 


CHAPTER    XXI. 


THE   PLAY   AND   THE   THEATRE. 

THE  PRIMITIVE  INN-YARD  STAGE  OF  OLD  ENGLAND  — 
DISAPPEARANCE  OF  THK  ENGLISH  DRAMA  OF  THE  SOIL  — 
THE  SAXON  PLAY  AND  TIN:  MODERN  THEATRE  —  LONDON 
THEATRES  AND  LAW-COURT  ROOMS  —  HENRY  IRVING  AT 
THK  LYCEUM  —  THE  SCEPTRE  OF  FASHION  —  SARA  BERN- 
IIAKDT  OVER  FROM  THE  THEATRE 


SEVERAL  ancient  London  inns,  with  spacious  interior 
court-yards  surrounded  with  galleries  in  the  shape  of  a 
continuous  porch  running  around  the  second  story,  are 
still  pointed  out  as  the  rude  and  simple  play-housed  of 
Old  England.  The  stage  here  was  the  pavement  of 
the  court-yard.  The  spectators  gathered  on  the  upper 
porches,  or  perhaps  could  even  sit  at  their  chamber 
windows  and  see  and  hear  the  play,  as  I  have  done  this 
year  in  a  provincial  Italian  town,  and  seen  good  acting. 
The  servants  of  the  inn  and  hangers-on  clustered  in  the 
corners  of  the  court-yard,  standing  on  the  ground,  or 
maybe  indulging  in  the  kitchen-stools  and  stable- 
benches.  It  is,  perhaps,  in  survival  of  this  tradition  that 
in  most  of  the  London  theatres  of  to-day  the  best  part 
of  the  house  is  called  the  pit,  and  that  seats  in  it  are 
Fold  at  a  cheap  price  and  fashion  rigorously  shuns  it, 
The  modern  pit  is  the  survivor  of  the  old  inn  court- 
yard, and  the  flavor  of  the  stable  and  kitchen  still 
clings  to  it.  Many  of  the  plays  of  Shakespeare  were 
brought  before  the  people  on  just  such  simple  boards,  some 
of  them  in  some  of  these  very  inns.  This  was  in  the  days 
of  Merrie  England  and  of  strolling  players,  —  the  time 
when  England  was  a  play-going  nation.  She  was  then 
Catholic  and  monarchical  in  heart.  To-day  she  is 


190  LONDON. 

Protestant  and  republican,  and  her  native  drama  is 
gone. 

There  is  something  in  democracy  and  Puritanism 
which  drives  the  theatre  out  of  a  national  life.  The 
people  have  risen  to  higher  interests.  When  the  Puritan 
became  ascendant  in  England  he  closed  up  the  play- 
houses, burnt  the  plays,  branded  the  poor  players,  and, 
perhaps,  drove  them  with  cropped  ears  out  of  the  land. 
They  have  never  come  back.  England  has  her  theatres 
to-day,  but  they  are  no  more  an  institution  of  the  people. 
They  are  simply  a  conventional  amusement  of  the  higher 
classes  common  to  the  world.  They  flourish  only  in  her 
cities.  The  "  play"  of  English  literature  has  disap- 
peared. 

A  popular  love  of  the  drama  among  the  humble 
body  of  the  people  only  exists  in  that  condition  of  civi- 
lization where  there  is  a  high  development  of  the  dra- 
matic element  in  Church  and  State.  Wherever  there 
are  elaborate  rites  and  forms  in  the  Church,  and  scenic 
displays  in  the  Government,  there  the  heart  of  the 
common  people  is  really  moved  by  its  drama,  which, 
however  humble  it  may  be,  answers  to  and  satisfies  a 
popular  craving.  A  drama  of  the  soil  flourishes  best 
when  the  High-Church  principle  rules  in  the  Church 
and  the  monarchical  principle  in  the  State.  In  Italy 
to-day,  where  the  people  are  born  actors,  the  daily  ser- 
vice of  the  Church  is  always  an  impressive  picture,  and 
it  flowers  all  the  time  in  imposing  "functions"  in 
grand  cathedrals  so  built  that  the  chancel  railings 
enclose  a  magnificent  stage  where  a  hundred  or  more 
priests  and  acolytes  can  countermarch,  intone,  swing 
censers,  and  group  themselves  in  effective  tableaux. 
From  the  England  of  the  play  and  play-houses  come 
down  scenic  coronations  and  spectacular  openings  of  Par- 
liament, which  are  performed  yet  to-day,  but  to  irre- 
sponsive audiences.  The  whole  order  of  life  of  the  peer- 
age is,  in  fact,  a  colossal  play  for  the  amusement  and 
impression  of  the  common  people.  When  the  people 


THE  PL  A  I    AND    THE    THEATRE.  191 

get  behind  the  scenes  then  comes  democracy.  Democ- 
racy has  come  for  England,  and  the  drama  as  a  native 
institution  ~has  disappeared  before  it.  The  old  name, 
even,  is  gone.  The  Saxon  "  play"  of  the  people  has 
given  way  to  the  Latin  theatrum  of  fashion.  The 
English  theatre  of  to-day  does  not  differ  from  the 
American.  The  same  plays  are  acted  in  the  same  way, 
and  the  same  kind  of  people  go  to  hear  them, — viz., 
the  well-off  world  of  fashion  and  the  very  dregs  of 
the  cities.  The  vast  body  of  the  people  have  no  more 
interest  in  them  than  have  ours. 

The  theatres  of  London,  then-lore,  although  good  in 
their  several  ways,  oiler  no  field  for  the  study  of  Eng- 
'ish  life  except  incidentally.  The  houses  themselves 
were  not  materially  diU'erent  from  ours,  and  they 
seemed  to  grade  themselves  fashionable,  middle  class, 
low,  much  as  ours  do. 

In  this  similarity  to  ours  they  resemble  every  other  in- 
stitution whose  development  in  England  and  our  country 
has  been  under  similar  condition-.  I  took  a  stroll  one 
day  through  the  law-courts  of  London  under  a  barrister's 
guidance,  and  was  surprised  to  find  how  little  they  dif- 
fered from  ours.  Even  the  men  in  them  were  the  same. 
There  was  the  little,  withered-iip,  old  lawyer,  the  portly, 
substantial,  prosperous  one,  the  hurried,  full-of-busi- 
:ulvocate,  the  hungry,  shabby  attorney,  who  lias 
given  up  the  race,  and  haunts  the  court-room  by 
habit;  the  judge  who  tried  the  case  himself,  and  did 
all  the  talking;  the  judge  whose  docket  was  always 
behindhand  ;  the  barrister  with  unclean  linen  and  un- 
brushed  clothes.  They  were  all  there  just  as  they  are 
hitting  in  the  court-rooms  of  Pennsylvania  to-day.  It 
may  be  that  Pennsylvania,  accepting  the  common  law 
in  full  and  the  old  English  system  of  pleading,  and 
changing  very  little  of  anything  until  within  this  gen- 
eration, has  carried  down  something  more  of  the  detail 
of  the  English  court-room  than  other  States,  but  it  is 
not  much.  The  controlling  reason  for  the  likeness  is 


192  LONDON. 

that  for  three  hundred  years  the  law,  always  a  con- 
servative profession,  has  advanced  with  equal  steps 
and  under  nearly  equal  conditions  in  England  and  this 
country.  The  American  lawyer  has  added  to  his  pro- 
fessional labors  the  burden  of  politics,  which,  in  Eng- 
land, has  been  generally  shouldered  by  another  class, 
but  that  is  about  all  the  difference  in  their  lives.  He 
threw  away  the  wig,  also,  and  that  is  about  all  the 
difference  there  is  in  the  coup  d'ceil  of  an  English 
and  American  court-room.  And  that  is  a  difference 
to  our  advantage.  I  failed  entirely  to  see  the  dignity 
and  impressiveness  which,  to  the  English  mind,  lies  in 
a  horse-hair  wig.  They  give  a  slovenly  and  unclean  air 
to  a  whole  room.  Few  were  well  kept,  none  of  them 
looked  fresh,  and  many  were  nasty. 

All  theatre-going  London,  in  1879,  was  divided  in 
its  worship  of  Henry  Irving  and  Sara  Bernhardt,  both 
of  whom  are  promised  to  America,  and  both  of  whom 
have  made  conquest  of  the  world  of  fashion  as  well  af 
of  the  stage. 

Henry  Irving  has  unquestionably  achieved  a  wonder 
ful  success  in  holding  the  sustained  attention  of  Lon- 
don. His  plays  are  mostly  of  a  high  order, — mainly 
Shakespearian.  His  Merchant  of  Venice  has  held  the 
stage  for  hundreds  of  nights,  and  there  are  no  symptoms 
to  show  that  the  interest  is  flagging.  One  must  go  a 
week  beforehand  to  secure  seats,  and  this  has  been  the 
case  for  several  years.  His  theatre  is  the  Lyceum, — 
on  classic  ground  just  off  the  Strand.  Mr.  Irving  is  a 
spare,  rather  fine-looking  man,  with  an  intellectual  face 
and  the  carriage  of  a  gentleman.  He  has  the  sem- 
blance of  a  bend  in  his  shoulders  greater  than  the 
reality.  When  acting  you  see  Henry  Irving  all  the  time, 
but  it  is  not  offensive.  He  blends  with  his  character, 
but  he  never  loses  himself  even  to  the  incidents  of 
his  appearance.  There  is,  for  instance,  a  certain  melo- 
dramatic air  about  him,  recognizable  plainly  in  his 


THE   PLAY  AND   THE   THEATRE.  193 

photographs,  which  never  forsakes  him  and  leaves  on 
one  a  suspicion  that  he  is  forever  posing.  He  wears  a 
"melancholy  mien,"  as  one  who  carries  around  from 
hour  to  hour  the  burden  of  a  great  grief,  a  secret 
mystery,  perhaps  even  a  delicious  crime.  This  manner, 
however,  is  one  of  chaste  repression,  and  the  highest 
finish  of  subdued  refinement.  There  is  not  the  least 
suggestion  of  the  possibility  of  a  scene  or  of  anything  that 
might  violate  the  minutest  conventionalities  of  good 
society.  It  is  an  air  eminently  calculated  to  charm  and 
interest  a  sympathetic  woman  with  time  on  her  hands 
and  plenty  of  money. 

This  charm  Mr.  Irving  has  worked,  and  it  is  the 
danger  which  confronts  him  now  in  coming  to  our 
country.  Although  an  excellent,  conscientious,  and 
scholarly  actor,  Mr.  Irving  owes  his  sovereignty  of  the 
London  stage  to  the  stamp  of  aristocratic  endorsement 
set  on  him  personally.  Society,  in  a  country  where 
society  is  thoroughly  organized, "has  approved  him.  It 
has  taken  him  up,  it  has  opened  its  drawing-rooms  to 
him,  it  has  made  it  the  mode  to  go  to  the  Lyceum. 
iiisliops  hear  him,  the  clergy  of  good  society  discuss 
him  with  rcfif/ieuse  peeresses;  the  journal  with  social 
ambition  hymns  his  praist-s.  It  is  verv  meet  and  right 
and  proper  now  in  England  to  hear  Henry  Irving. 

Now  in  this  country  we  have  nothing  at  all  to  answer 
to  the  direct  and  powerful  influence  of  the  English 
aristocracy  in  general  society.  It  can  take  up  a  pet  of 
any  kind,  for  a  mere  whim,  perhaps,  and  his  fortune  is 
made.  And  it  does  take  up  these  pets  all  the  time,  and 
in  the  most  capricious  way.  Sometimes  it  is  an  actor, 
sometimes  it  is  a  clergyman,  sometimes  it  is  an  artist, 
sometimes  it  is  a  beauty,  sometimes  even  the  whim  may 
be  to  buy  at  a  certain  shop  or  patronize  a  certain  trades- 
man. Whatever  it  is,  the  success  of  the  pet  is  assured. 
All  London  kneels  at  the  feet  of  the  beauty,  throngs  the 
theatre  of  the  actor,  buys  the  pictures  of  the  artist,  or 
crowds  the  shop  of  the  favorite  tradesman.  Perhaps 
i  n  17 


194  LONDON. 

society  even  tolerates  or  half  invites  a  mi  Id  and  cautions 
snubbing  from  its  pet.  This  is  the  perilous  position  of 
Henry  Irving.  He  is  the  pet  of  London  society,  and 
specially  of  that  wing  of  it  which  affects  to  be  non- 
worldly.  He  stands  at  the  head  of  the  English  stage, 
but  how  far  he  owes  that  position  to  an  arbitrary  degree 
of  fashion,  and  how  far  to  a  genuine  mastery  of  his 
profession,  it  may  take  the  verdict  of  an  American  pub- 
lic to  decide. 

When  Sara  Bernhardt  first  comes  on  the  stage  you 
see  a  meagre-looking,  rather  impassive  soubrette,  with  a 
plain  thin  face  and  a  body  that  looks  like  an  unin- 
teresting fabrication  of  whalebones  and  corsets.  You 
are  looking  anxiously  at  every  entrance  for  the  great 
actress  to  make  her  appearance,  when  it  breaks  on  you 
with  a  disappointment  that  this  inferior  young  woman 
is  she  herself.  It  can  hardly  be,  it  cannot  possibly  be, 
but  a  moment  or  two  and  the  inexorable  caste  decides. 
Yes,  it  is  she,  certainly.  Soon  the  "  divine  skeleton" 
begins  to  breathe,  the  eyes  of  the  soul  light  up  the 
sunken  face,  and  the  worn  body  clothes  itself  with  flesh 
and  grace. 

There  can  be  no  question  as  to  the  Bernhardt's  right 
to  her  throne.  Disendowed  with  a  body  carrying  which 
many  a  rustic  girl  would  give  up  the  village  rare,  she 
has  placed  herself  at  the  head  of  the  actresses  of  her 
day,  flooded  the  capitals  of  two  continents  with  her 
face,  and  dictated  the  mode  in  dress  and  adornment  of 
the  civilized  world.  And  this  resistless  power  of  hers 
which  holds  London  and  Paris  at  her  feet,  and  sends 
her  fame  wherever  there  is  written  language,  is  the 
more  strange  that  it  is  so  purely  intellectual.  With  none 
of  the  sensuous  charms  of  physical  attraction,  she  has 
nevertheless  always  made  men  the  slaves  of  her  body. 
On  the  stage  it  is  the  passion  of  the  soul  which  achieves 
her  triumphs.  You  see  forever  the  fiery  mind  flaming 
through  the  frail  body.  Her  power  is  that  wondrous 


THE  PLAY  AND    THE   THEATRE.  195 

Hebrew  force  in  civilization  which  flashes  out  all 
through  history,  and  which  in  our  own  day  we  confess 
in  a  Disraeli,  a  Gambetta,  a  Rothschild,  and  a  Rachel. 
Almost  any  woman  with  Sara  Bernhardt's  body  would 
look  like  a  faded  little  seamstress  all  her  life  and  feel 
like  one.  She  has  set  that  body  on  a  throne  and  made 
all  the  women  in  Christendom  do  homage  to  it.  The 
experienced  modern  eye  will  see  modes  of  dress  and 
little  achievements  of  feminine  embellishment  in  every 
town  of  the  United  States,  which  were  conceived  and 
brought  forth  solely  to  rectify  certain  lines  in  Miss 
Bernhardt's  physical  frame  or  to  draw  off  attention 
from  certain  others  that  would  not  be  successfully  recti- 
fied. What  greater  triumph  is  open  to  woman  than  to 
thus  chain  her  whole  sex  to  her  chariot  wheels? 

When  Sara  Bernhardt  came  to  London  success  was 
immediate  and  assured.  The  commission  of  the  classic 
Theatre  Franqais — the  fnvt  stage  of  the  world — had, 
perhaps,  made  this  a  sure  thing,  but  nevertheless  society 
undertook  her  cause,  and  made  it  a  social  necessity  to 
have  seen  her.  Under  the  aegis  of  His  Royal  High- 
ness the  Prince  of  Wales  the  comparatively  Puritan  it- 
drawing-rooms  of  London  were  opened,  with  some 
qualms  it  is  true,  to  "  Miss  Sara  Bernhardt  and  son," 
and  Matthew  Arnold  in  the  elaborate  pages  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century  paid  the  compliments  of  the  world  of 
scholarship  and  higher  letters. 

As  an  actress,  there  is  no  doubt  of  her  power.  Her 
very  presence  grows  on  one  with  a  fascination  he  cannot 
understand.  There  is  a  finish,  a  consummate  grace,  a 
trained  force  in  every  movement  and  position  that 
throw  around  her  the  real  histrionic  nimbus  and  estab- 
lish her  divine  right  to  the  succession  of  the  sov- 
ereignty of  the  stage.  Her  genius  is  a  perfection  of 
simulation  of  which,  perhaps,  our  heavier  Saxon  race 
is  not  capable,  and  therefore  admires  the  more. 

The  special  circles  which  respectively  chaperoned 
Henry  Irving  and  Sara  Bernhardt  represent  rathei 


196  IONDON. 

antipodal  elements  of  London  society,  but  it  is  all  a 
matter  of  the  upper  classes.  The  people  of  England 
know  nothing  and  care  nothing  for  either  of  the  stars 
that  reign  in  the  theatrical  firmament.  They  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  London  stage  of  our  day,  which 
is  not  English.  It  may  be  cosmopolitan,  electic  of  the 
world,  better  than  all  England  ever  did  or  could  afford, 
but  it  is  not  national. 
LONDON. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

THE   LONDON   TIMES. 

IN  THE  FORTRESS  OF  THE  THUNDERER — MECHANICAL  PLANT 
AND  MANAGEMENT  OF  THE  ESTABLISHMENT  —  PRESSES  — 
TYPE-FOUNDING — ELECTRIC  LIGHT — ELECTROTYPING-SHOP — 
THE  CANTEEN — TELEGRAPHIC  SERVICE — PRINTING  BY  EAR 
— NIGHT-WORK — THE  PAPER  OF  THE  FUTURE — AMERICAN 
AND  ENGLISH  JOURNALISM. 

PRINTING-HOUSE  SQUARE,  which  sounds  so  grandly 
from  across  the  seas,  is  in  London  so  modest  a  place 
that  one  can  readily  pass  by  it  unwittingly,  as  I  did, 
even  after  having  fixed  its  general  locality  from  the 
map,  and  started  out  to  find  it.  This,  however,  is  not 
because  "  the  Square"  is  an  inconsiderable  structure, 
but  because  of  the  magnitude  of  London,  which  is  so 
immense  that  one  only  comes  to  a  conception  of  it 
slowly  and  by  experience  such  as  this. 

The  Times  building  is  really  a  massive  pile  of  solid 
brick  of  fair  architectural  effect,  which  in  New  York  or 
Philadelphia  might  be  one  of  the  features  of  the  city. 
In  London  it  is  simply  lost, — crowded  .away  among 
square  miles  of  similar  structures  densely  packed  and 
pressed  together. 

Printing-House  Square,  the  castle  of   the    modern 


THE  LONDON   TIMES.  197 

Thunderer,  stands  on  the  reputed  site  of  an  old  Norman 
fortress.  There  is  something  dramatic  in  this  coinci- 
dence which  makes  the  spot  the  suggestive  vignette  of 
whole  centuries  of  history,  and  starts  a  thousand  poetic 
and  philosophic  dreams  on  the  local  correlation  of 
force. 

I  had  had  no  acquaintance  with  The  Times,  but  a 
note  of  introduction  sent  by  kind  thought  fulness  of  a 
leading  New  York  editor  opened  widely  and  hospitably 
its  doors,  and  I  spent  a  portion  of  a  day  most  profitably 
in  an  exhaustive  inspection  of  its  plant  and  watching 
somewhat  the  process  of  its  daily  work.  Let  me  tell 
of  some  of  its  wonders. 

In  this  letter  I  shall  confine  myself  chiefly  to  the 
mechanical  features,  as  being  of  most  popular  interest 
and  best  picturing  the  establishment  to  the  non-profes- 
sional world.  The  editorial  side  is  of  professional 
rather  than  public  interest,  and,  besides,  why  should  the 
arcana  of  the  profession  be  laid  before  those  eyes  which 
see  not  ? 

I  shall  avoid  also  the  familiar  figures  which  simply 
prove  a  colossal  business,  and  which  would  be  equally 
impressive  in  recording  the  results  of  a  pork-packing  or 
brick-making  establishment,  and  attempt  to  briefly  out- 
line some  of  the  features  which  are  distinctive  to  The 
Times  and  characteristic. 

Solidly  established  for  years,  founded  on  the  strong 
bases  of  the  University  and  the  governing  classes  of 
England,  conducted  by  men  every  one  of  whom  is  an 
expert  and  veteran  in  the  business,  The  Times  enjoys  an 
income  that  now  comes  in  of  itself,  and  stretching  out 
like  some  of  our  great  railway  companies,  it  now  em- 
ploys a  portion  of  its  surplus  revenues  every  year  in 
buttressing  itself,  by  extending  its  works  out  to  the  per- 
manent manufacture  of  its  own  supplies.  These  things 
are  permanent  investments,  not  expenses,  and,  although 
costly  in-  the  start,  in  the  long  course  of  years  save 
money. 

17* 


198  LONDON. 

Let  me  enumerate  some  of  the  most  important  as 
illustrative  of  the  scope  of  the  plant.  The  Times — 

I.  Manufactures  its  own  presses. 
II.  Founds  its  own  type. 

III.  Provides  its  own  light — electric. 

IV.  Feeds  its  employees  on  the  spot. 
V.  Has  its  own  electrotyping-shop. 

VI.  Has  its  own  telegraphic  service  and  wires — in 
the  main  ;  and 

VII.  Repair-shops  for  all  these  different  machineries. 
All  these  great  shops  and  offices  are  under  one  roof,  and 

the  cluster  of  them,  with  the  other  ordinary  departments 
of  a  newspaper-office, — editorial-,  composing-,  proof-, 
stereotyping-,  making-up-,  press-,  business-,  advertising-, 
and  distribution-rooms, — form  The  Times  building. 

The  Walter  presses  are  made  here  for  the  market  as 
well  as  for  the  proprietor's  own  paper,  and  in  these 
shops  I  found  the  workmen  in  the  busy  clatter  of 
turning  out  great  machines,  as  in  any  great  factory  or 
foundry. 

In  the  press-room  of  the  paper  stand  eight;  six  go 
every  night  and  two  stand  by  as  a  reserve  brigade. 
Each  press  prints  a  whole  copy  of  The  Times,  both 
sides,  sixteen  pages,  and  at  the  rate  of  twelve  thousand 
per  hour.  The  edition,  therefore,  goes  off  at  the  rate 
of  seventy-two  thousand  per  hour.  These  presses  are 
ranged  in  three  columns  in  an  immense  room  on  the 
first  floor  of  the  building,  the  enormous  weight  sup- 
ported by  arches.  The  paper-room;  another  large  space, 
is  just  below  the  press-room,  the  paper  being  hoisted  up 
by  a  lift  (American  elevator)  into  the  centre  of  the 
press-room.  In  the  spacious  paper-rooms  below  you 
wander  through  long  avenues  of  huge  rolls  of  paper, 
each  roll  four  miles  long.  I  watched  at  one  of  the 
presses  the  four-mile  run  of  one  of  these  rolls,  and  it 
was  striking  to  see  how  quickly  it  was  clone. 

Much  of  the  mechanical  interest  of  The  Times  cen- 
tres in  its  type  department.  I  brought  away  with  ma 


THE  LONDON   TIMES.  199 

some  type  made  under  my  eye  in  the  founding-room. 
But  that  is  only  the  beginning  of  the  wonder.  Fol- 
lowing this  type  into  another  department  you  see  it  set 
by  machinery.  All  publishers  are  familiar  with  the 
history  of  the  long  effort  of  Mr.  Walter  in  this  direc- 
tion. Here  is  the  result : 

One-half  of  The  Times  every  night  is  set  by  ma- 
chinery. One  machine  does  the  work  of  six  to  eight 
skilled  compositors.  It  cannot  correct,  however,  and 
here  is  its  weak  point,  or  the  whole  paper  would  be  set 
with  it.  As  it  is,  the  work  is  about  divided.  Doubtful 
copy  and  all  revisions  are  done  by  hand,  the  steady, 
regular  work  by  machinery. 

A  young  man  sits  before  what  looks  like  a  piano- 
board,  with  four  or  five  banks  of  keys  all  lettered. 
He  plays  on  these  keys  with  forefingers  of  each  hand 
rapidly,  and  the  type  are  as  rapidlv  shifted  into  a  kind 
of  minute  steel  galley,  the  exact  width  of  the  body  of  a 
type.  There  is  no  system  of  fingering  as  with  piano 
music, — only  the  two  paws  fly  like  lightning. 

The  distributing-machine  just  reverses  the  process  of 
the  setting  instrument,  and  in  the  last  stage  each  letter 
of  the  alphabet  is  rapidlv  shunted  off  on  to  its  separate 
side-track,  where  they  stand  like  long  trains  of  freight 
cars  in  the  yard  of  a  colossal  depot.  It  is  a  wonderful 
machine,  but  there  are  others,  1  think,  now  surely  ap- 
proaching perfection  of  much  more  interest  and  impor- 
tance to  newspaper  property. 

The  last  permanent  investment  of  The  Times  has 
been  the  manufacture  of  its  own  light  on  the  electric 
system,  using  carbon  points.  The  cost  for  the  plant  of 
this  has  been  very  great,  but  it  is  so  far  successful,  and 
the  cost  of  now  producing  light  is  very  moderate. 

The  entire  building  is  lighted  by  sixteen  electric 
lights,  each  light  of  from  eight  hundred  to  one  thousand 
candle-power,  far  more  than  is  needed.  Sixteen  wires, 
each  starting  directly  from  a  battery,  are  used  to  dis- 
tribute the  light,  and  the  battery  is  worked  from  a  solid 


and  powerful  steam-engine.  This  engine  had  to  be 
built  expressly  for  the  electric  battery,  and  its  power 
cannot  be  used  for  any  other  purpose ;  the  light  would 
waver  and  be  unsteady.  Quite  thick  porcelain  globes 
are  used  to  temper  the  fierce  power  of  the  light,  and  the 
dark  shadows  are  in  part  corrected  by  reflection  from 
white  bowls.  I  see  no  reason  why  the  new  Edison 
light  should  not  be  attached  to  this  plant,  if  desirable. 

This  electric  manufacture  has  been  an  advertisement 
for  The  Times,  but  so  far  it  is  not  an  economy.  They 
have  more  light  than  they  need  or  want  to  have,  and  the 
cost  of  the  plant  is  the  capital  of  a  gas  company,  u<>t  a 
legitimate  expense  of  a  newspaper  establishment. 

The  employees  of  The  Times  are  fed  in  the  building, 
— a  great  saving  of  time  to  employer  and  employed. 
The  canteen  consists  of  a  fine  large  kitchen  and  two 
dining-rooms.  Food  ig  supplied  at  cost  rates  to  the 
men, — "  everything  except  beer,  on  which  is  char_r>  d  a 
little  profit,  which  saves  the  canteen  always  from  loss, 
and  the  margin  of  profit,  whatever  it  may  be,  is  alv 
turned  in  to  an  employees'  relief  fund  which  we  have," 
it  was  explained  to  me, 

u  That  is  very  excellent ;  but  we  do  not  call  beer 
'food'  in  America." 

The  canteen  is  a  very  good  and  saving  institution. 

-  ipplies  a  kind  of  cheap  club  to  the  men,  but  there 
could  be  no  better  illustration  of  the  difference  of 
habits  and  manners  on  the  liquor  question  between  the 
two  countries.  Here  was  a  careful  and  conscientious 
employer  furnishing  liquor  to  his  force;  and,  mor*> 
than  that,  long  rows  of  bright,  burnished  pewter  ale- 
mugs,  each  with  "  The  Times"  proudly  engraved  on 
its  beaming  face,  greeted  my  vision  as  one  of  the  em- 
bellishments of  the  canteen. 

The  eleetrotyping-shop  is  a  well-appointed  room, 
equipped  with  all  the  modern  appliances  of  the  trade, 
where  are  made  the  plates  for  the  weather  diagrams 
published  daily  in  The  Times,  and  also  maps,  charts, 


THE  LOKDOS  TIMES. 

etc.  So  well  is  this  shop  perfected  that  a  moderate- 
sized  plate  can  be  turned  out  in  a  few  minutes.  Prac- 
tical newspaper  managers  will  recognize  the  economy 
and  desirable  use  of  this  attachment. 

The  Times  has  its  own  wires  over  much  of  England 
and  most  of  the  continent,  and  its  own  service  of  them 
by  accomplished  correspondents, — men  of  ability  and 
influence.  It  uses  Renter  (the  Associated  Press  of 
Europe),  but  only  partially  and  as  an  incident,  its  pace 
or  more  of  telegraphic  news  being  generally  exclusively 
its  own,  and  the  Reuter  news  coming  in  only  in  a  supple- 
mentary way.  It  is  a  common  expression  among  news- 
paper men  in  our  country  that  we  only  use  die  telegraph 
largely.  I  think  that  the  special  telegraph  service  of 
The  Times  exceeds  that  of  any  American  newspaper, 
saving,  possibly,  the  New  York  Herald  and  the  Chicago 
Times.  It  does  not  strike  the  popular  and  uneducated 
eye,  perhaps,  so  strongly  as  ours,  because  it  does  not  deal 
in  criminal  news,  small  fires,  petty  accidents,  sensations, 
etc. ;  but  every  morning  The  times  does  have  a  de- 
spatch from  every  capital  in  Europe  from  a  u  stick"  to 
a  column  and  a  half  or  two  columns  in  length,  giving 
the  political  situation  of  the  day  and  the  great  business 
and  social  features, — the  matter  that  statesmen  and 
scholars  and  leaders  read  and  talk  about  They  are 
its  constituency.  Its  telegraphic  service  of  special 
matter  averages,  I  think,  about  a  page  a  day,  and  a 
page  of  The  Times  is  equal  in  superficies  to  over 
twenty  per  cent,  more  than  a  page  of  the  New  York 
Herald. 

It  is  all  solid  news,  too, — no  padding  or  whipped 
cream. 

The  reception  of  the  telegraphic  news  of  The  Times  is 
something  unique.  The  lines  from  the  continental 
capitals,  Berlin,  Paris,  Rome,  Vienna,  etc.,  all,  of 
course,  converge  in  one  room,  and  the  despatches  are 
received  over  an  instrument  that  prints.  The  print- 
ing, however,  serves  merely  as  a  record.  The  despatch, 


202  LONDON. 

as  it  is  received,  is  read  off  by  the  telegraph  operatoi 
to  the  operator  of  a  type-machine,  who  plays  it  off  by 
ear,  and  the  despatch,  thus  reduced  to  written  form,  is 
supplied  to  the  editors  in  printed  proof.  Of  course, 
only  the  work  of  responsible  correspondents,  likely  to 
need  no  alteration,  is  honored  in  this  way.  It  would 
be  too  expensive  to  treat  thus  matter  requiring  editing. 

The  type-setting-machine  compositors  are,  of  course, 
a  class  to  themselves,  or,  rather,  to  The  Times.  Every 
ordinary  compositor  going  on  The  Times  obligates  him- 
self to  abandon  all  Unions  or  outside  organizations. 

Indeed,  in  many  things  the  office  is  exclusive  in  this 
way.  It  does  not  employ  men  who  serve  on  other 
papers,  and  those  who  work  on  The  Times  are  pro- 
tected in  many  ways  from  outside  affiliations.  As  a 
curious  instance  of  this  feeling,  I  was  shown,  in  a 
distant  portion  of  the  building,  a  rather  desolate, 
cheerless-looking  room  for  casual  employees  or  tem- 
porary contributors,  "  persons  that  we  don't  want  to 
mix  up  with  our  own  men,  you  know." 

But  all  this  costly  mechanical  plant  did  not  make 
The  Times.  It  was  before  all  these  things  were,  which 
are  but  its  menial  equipment.  The  being  of  The  Times 
is  in  the  brain-power  and  character  of  its  founder  and 
directors.  It  is  a  power  and  an  authority  and  an  in- 
fluence because  of  their  strength  and  social  force.  So 
high  is  the  personal  character  of  the  direction  of  this 
paper,  so  judicial  and  scholarly  its  editing,  so  careful 
and  judicious  its  expression,  that  it  has,  at  home  and 
abroad,  all  the  responsibility,  standing,  and  influence 
of  a  living  and  responsible  man.  It  has,  in  fact,  the 
social  position,  political  weight,  and  personal  character 
of  the  best-born,  best-educated,  and  highest-minded 
man  in  Britain,  and  in  its  circulation,  therefore,  has 
just  the  association,  relations,  and  influence  which  such 
a  man  would  have.  And  it  has  all  this  and  keeps  it 
just  because  it  is  owned  and  edited  by  just  this  class 
of  men. 


THE  LONDON  TIMES.  203 

A  marked  feature  of  the  place  is  the  large  amount 
of  hard  work  and  unremitting  attention  bestowed  un- 
ceasingly on  The  Times  by  its  proprietors  and  editors. 

Here  is  an  old  paper,  perhaps  the  best  established  in 
the  world.  Every  man  on  it  holding  any  responsible 
position  is  an  expert  in  the  business.  The  experience 
of  some  of  them  is  hereditary.  Every  employee  on  the 
paper  is  of  the  highest  grade  of  scholarship  or  business 
training,  but  the  managers  and  editor  are  working  as 
hard  and  closely  as  if  they  were  starting  a  new  enter- 
prise. Let  me  give  some  facts  : 

All  the  editorial  work  is  done  at  night,  the  editors 
not  coming  down  at  all  in  the  daytime. 

Mr.  Chenery,  the  editor,  sees  the  first  paper  off  the 
press  everv  night. 

Mr.  McDonald,  the  managing  publisher,  sees  the 
whole  edition  off  the  press  every  night. 

The  paper  goes  to  press  at  3.30  A.M.,  but  these  men 
know  that  from  midnight  to  3  A.M.  is  the  quarter-deck 
in  action  of  a  morning  paper,  and  they  are  on  it.  Mr. 
Walter's  (the  main  proprietor's)  own  house  is  adjoining 
and  runs  into  The  Times  building;  is  substantially  a 
part  of  it.  The  dwelling  of  Mr.  Delane,  the  late 
editor,  stood  quite  near  the  office,  between  Printing- 
House  Square  and  The  Temple.  He,  too,  always  was 
on  deck  at  night  until  the  paper  went  .down.  Both  of 
their  dwellings  are  far  down  town;  infinitely  farther 
from  the  social  life  and  rest  of  London  than  would  be 
Third  and  Chestnut  from  that  of  Philadelphia.  But 
the  night  is  the  life  of  a  morning  paper. 

The  Times  having  no  long  railway  routes  to  travel,  as 
all  England  is  covered  in  a  few  hours,  and  running  off 
its  edition  at  the  speed  of  seventy-two  thousand  an  hour, 
can  afford  to  wait  until  a  later  moment  before  going  to 
press  than  a  paper  of  Philadelphia  or  New  York.  I  may 
say  here,  the  editors  of  all  kinds  each  have  a  room  to 
themselves,  and  work  under  all  the  advantages  of  seclu- 
sion and  silence.  These  rooms,  nearly  every  one  of 


204  LONDON. 

which  I  visited,  are  spacious,  often  about  sixteen  by 
sixteen  or  twenty  feet,  and  substantially  furnished, 
have  high  ceilings,  are  well  ventilated  and  comfortably 
lighted.  They  have,  in  fact,  something  of  the  com- 
fortable air  of  a  university  chamber. 

Another  marked  feature  is  the  watchful  economy 
practised  in  the  daily  management.  While  all  the  first- 
cost  or  investment  expenses  have  been  on  the  most  lib- 
eral and  solid  scale,  the  daily  running  expenses  are  very 
closely  guarded.  The  story  of  the  rags  in  The  Times 
composing-room,  I  suppose,  is  familiar  to  all  interested 
in  the  newspaper  business,  but  I  saw  other  things  quite 
as  remarkable.  For  instance,  I  saw  in  a  comparatively 
small  package  the  entire  waste  paper  of  the  previous 
day's  seventy  thousand  edition  of  The  Times, — i.e.,  the 
sheets  of  defective  paper  or  paper  spoiled  on  the  press, — 
and  it  was  not  as  large  as  often  is  the  waste  of  a  Phila- 
delphia paper.  Per  contra,  it  is  to  be  said  the  paper  is 
of  better  quality  and  less  likely  to  tear  or  break.  The 
same  economy — the  child  of  thorough  knowledge  of 
the  business — ran  through  every  department  of  the  es- 
tablishment, editorial  and  manufacturing.  There  was 
no  waste,  no  splashing,  and  close  saving.  The  cost  of 
specials  and  of  travelling  expenses  is  much  better  worked 
down  than  with  us, — indeed,  this  is  so  on  all  English 
papers.  The  composing-room  is  closely  watched, — no 
union  rules,  of  course,  interfering.  Repeat  advertise- 
ments are  not  distributed  and  reset  as  in  one  of  our 
American  newspapers,  but  held  as  long  as  the  type  re- 
mains in  good  order.  When  I  mentioned  the  custom 
of  a  New  York  journal  on  this  point  to  The  Times 
manager,  he  was  unaffectedly  astonished,  exclaiming, 
Cfest  magnifique  mais  ce  n'est  pas  la  guerre.  - 

The  distinguishing  characteristic  of  The  Times  is 
solidity. 

The  editorial  department,  like  everything  else  of  in- 
fluence and  weight  in  England,  rests  squarely  on  the 
university,  and  what  that  means  it  takes  some  insight 


THE  LONDON  TIMES.  205 

into  the  English  life  to  understand.  The  paper  ad- 
dresses the  leaders  and  thinkers  and  statesmen  of  the 
world,  and  it  must  have  the  best  trained  power  to  speak 
to  them. 

The  solid  paper  that  it  is  printed  on  is  equal  to  book 
paper  in  grade.  Three  of  the  sixteen-paged  numbers 
of  The  Times  go  to  the  pound  of  printing-paper. 

The  proof-reading  is  perfection, — more  scholarly  and 
faultless  than  that  of  the  average  American  book. 

Of  the  solidity  of  the  manufacturing  plant  this  letter 
has  amply  spoken. 

But  while  everything  is  solid  and  perfected  on  The 
Times,  while  every  man  on  it  is  trained  and  tried  in  his 
profession  and  there  is  no  experimenting  in  the  business 
of  the  establishment,  there  is  no  cessation  of  mental 
energies  or  invention,  for  these  men  are  veterans,  stand- 
ing ready  to  hold  their  paper  abreast  of  the  times  and 
to  seize  first  the  vantage-ground  of  any  new  discoveries 
that  might  affect  the  property  or  the  newspaper  life. 
The  Times,  indeed,  lias  always  been  a  college  of  inven- 
tion and  discovery  in  the  newspaper  world,  spending 
large;  sums  of  money  in  reaching  after  new  processes 
and  improvements  in  machinery  or  management. 
Among  the  achieved  results  of  its  labors  in  this  way 
are  the  Walter  press  and  the  type-setting  machine, — two 
enduring  monuments.  I  was  rather  startled  to  find  in 
this  connection  that  among  the  problems  revolving  in 
the  fecund  womb  of  The  Times  office  was  one  to  which 
I  have  for  several  years  given  a  good  deal  of  thought 
and  some  practical  labor, — viz.,  the  publication  simul- 
taneously of  a  great  daily  paper  in  a  dozen  cities.  That 
is  certainly  the  newspaper  of  the  future,  and  the  future 
may  be  near  at  hand. 

There  is  no  excitement  or  nervous  hurry  in  The  Time* 
building, — nothing,  perhaps,  that  would  impress  an  un- 
skilled visitor, — but  the  mental  atmosphere  is  ve,ry 
stimulating.  In  fact,  one  feels  tired  and  exhausted — 
that  familiar  experience  of  our  Centennial  Exposition 

18 


206  LONDON. 

— after  inspecting  honestly  its  plant  and  workings,  so 
great  are  the  achieved  results,  so  limitless  the  range  of 
the  thousand  suggestions  which  start  themselves  in  re- 
viewing in  the  sympathetic  companionship  of  its  own 
management  the  first  newspaper  office  of  the  world. 

In  such  a  visit  one's  mind  constantly  tends  to  run- 
ning a  parallel  between  the  English  journal  and  the 
American,  but  such  a  contrast  is  fair  to  neither,  and 
very  illusive.  In  the  first  place,  the  functions  or  uses 
of  the  two  papers  are  very  different.  As  newspapers 
we  undoubtedly  excel ;  but  the  English  papers  do  the 
thinking  for  their  communities  in  a  way  that  our  jour- 
nals do  not,  and,  as  a  consequence,  their  conductors 
have  a  higher  influence  and  stronger  standing  in  so- 
ciety. Then,  the  English  idea  of  "  news"  is  something 
very  different  from  ours,  and  the  Continental  concep- 
tion is  something  different  again  from  either.  And 
the  English  journals,  like  English  society,  are  divided 
by  classes  between  which  there  is  a  wide  gulf  such  as 
does  not  exist  with  us.  The  leading  papers  are  very 
strong,  dignified,  scholarly,  and  powerful  ;  the  lower 
papers  are  very  low,  and  the  classes  do  not  grade  into 
each  other  by  insensible  shades  as  with  us. 

In  fact,  the  papers  of  a  country  are  the  outcome  and 
development  of  its  life.  What  that  is  they  will  be. 
A  comparative  study  of  the  great  papers  of  the  world, 
say  The  Times  of  England,  Independence  Bvlge  of  Brus- 
sels, Golos  of  St.  Petersburg,  Figaro  of  Paris,  and 
others  of  like  representative  character,  will  lead  one 
more  and  more  to  this  conclusion  just  as  far  as  he  gets 
a  real  insight  to  the  representative  journals  themselves, 
their  editorial  direction  and  work,  the  character  of  their 
news  and  the  methods  of  its  presentation,  and,  finally, 
the  reception  and  support  of  the  journals  by  their  re- 
spective communities. 

LONDON. 


HISTORIC  TAVERNS.  207 

CHAPTER   XXIII. 

HISTORIC  TAVERNS. 

IN  THE  HAUNTS  OF  SHAKESPEARE  AND  BEN  JONSON — THE 
ENGLISH  INN — THE  TAVKRN  CLUBS  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH 
AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES — THE  SOMERSET  TAVERN  AND 
THE  JUNIUS  LETTERS— THE  RAINBOW  COFFEE-HOI  >K— 
DOCTOR  JOHNSON  AND  TIIK  MITRE — THE  CHESHIRE  CHEESE 
— THE  COCK — HISTORY  AND  POLITICS  IN  THE  INN  NAMES 
OF  ENGLAND. 

ALL  through  English  literature  there  come  down  to 
us  certain  names  of  homelike  London  inns,  which, 
although  familiar  by  their  oft  recurrence  and  the  flood 
of  associations  which  sweep  through  them, — the  memo- 
ries and  recollections  of  Shakespeare  and  Ben  Jonson, 
of  Goldsmith,  Burke,  Garrick,  Dean  Swift,  Pope,  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds,  Gibbon,  blufr  old  Dr.  Johnson,  Bos- 
well,  Pepys,  and  a  host  of  worthies, — are  yet  mostly 
thought  of  by  us  only  as  pictures,  as  something  utterly 
gone  and  passed  away,  like  the  silent  forum  or  the  des- 
olated mansions  of  Maecenas. 

It  is,  therefore,  a  pleasant  surprise  to  find  many  of 
them  here  in  the  flesh,  and  they  are  quite  worth  visit- 
ing and  picturing,  as  in  addition  to  their  intrinsic; 
interest  their  existence  to-day  is  thoroughly  illustrative 
of  an  inside  phase  of  English  life.  Many  of  these  his- 
toric taverns  exist  now  almost  exactly  as  they  did  in 
the  days  of  Dr.  Johnson  and  Goldsmith,  less  changed 
iu  their  outward  appearance  than  would  be  the  doctor 
or  the  deathless  "  Vicar"  if  living  now,  while  in  their 
inner  life  and  traditions  they  are  essentially  the  same  as 
a  century  or  more  ago. 

The  English  tavern  never  dies.  Landlords  may 
come  and  go,  servants  grow  venerable  and  pass  into 
local  traditions,  barmaids  bloom  and  fade  into  but 


208  LONDON. 

toasts  and  memories,  but  "  the  inn"  goes  on  forever. 
Heirlooms  accumulate  on  its  time-stained  walls ;  corners 
and  seats  grow  famous  as  the  men  who  once  claimed 
them  reveal  themselves  in  history  ;  the  genii  loci  gather 
with  the  centuries ;  but  the  inn  is  fresh  and  young  and 
warm  and  cheery  forever.  I  have  already  mentioned 
that  at  Stratford-on-Avon  an  inn  at  which  Washington 
Irving  rested  in  1830,  I  think,  and  mentioned  in  his 
published  letters,  still  lives  on  his  genial  recommenda- 
tion and  deserves  it.  At  Waltham  I  found  an  excel- 
lent country  inn  reputed  through  the  kingdom,  which 
dates  from  A.D.  1260,  an  undoubted  case  of  Bonifacial 
succession.  The  Four  Swans  blazons  to-day  this  ancient 
date  on  its  quaint  signboard,  and  confidently  appeals  to 
a  respectable  ancestry  of  six  centuries  as  its  best  claim 
to  the  patronage  of  the  travellers  of  1880-1900. 

So  it  is  with  the  London  taverns  of  literature.  Some 
of  them,  it  is  true,  have  yielded  up  the  ghost  under 
the  inexorable  hand  of  Time,  demolished  by  Boards 
of  Public  Improvement,  or  reconstructed  into  gilded 
modern  meaninglessness  by  vulgar  enterprise,  but  many 
of  them  yet  live,  respectable  just  as  they  were  respect- 
able of  yore,  and  sober  and  responsible,  with  the  charac- 
ter of  centuries  to  maintain.  "  The  Somerset  Tavern," 
the  "Cheshire  Cheese,"  the  "Rainbow,"  the  "Mitre," 
and  the  "  Cock,"  every  one  of  which  is  grandly  illus- 
trated in  English  literature  and  history,  are  all  here  yet, 
living  and  moving  and  having  their  being  in  the  daily 
life  of  this  our  nineteenth  century,  but  bringing  down 
to  us  in  hourly  detail  something  of  the  daily  life  of  the 
England  of  two  hundred  years  ago,  and  perhaps  more. 

All  of  these  that  I  have  mentioned  are  found  in  Fleet 
Street  and  along  the  Strand,  and  quite  near  together. 
They  all  stand  now,  however,  off  the  street  in  courts,  or 
what  were  once  courts,  and  are  reached  either  through 
dark  archways  or  by  extremely  narrow  and  modest 
little  alleys  which  a  stranger  would  readily  pass  un- 
noticed. Consequently,  they  are  saved  from  the  pro- 


HISTORIC  TAVERNS.  209 

fanation  of  vulgar  and  ignorant  custom.  The  customers 
of  these  inns  have  mostly  come  to  them  by  inheritance 
or  congenial  introduction.  These  courts  were  likely  at 
first  gardens,  such  as  stand  around  the  country  inn  now 
in  most  villages.  In  time,  as  the  town  choked  the 
fields,  they  were  built  up  close  around  to  the  very 
palings  of  the  little  garden  ;  the  roses  and  pansies  and 
marigolds  gave  way  to  flagstones  and  solid  pavement, 
and  the  hard-stone  court  was  thus  developed, — the  evo- 
lution of  the  city.  Carpenters'  Court  in  Philadelphia, 
inclosing  the  Carpenters'  Hall,  where  the  initial  Conti- 
nental Congress  sat,  is  a  good  American  illustration  of 
these  still  old  English  courts. 

The  Somerset  Tavern  stands  out  clear  in  the  memory 
of  every  student  of  constitutional  law  and  English  his- 
tory. Through  the  humble  hands  of  its  barmaid  passed 
the  MSS.  of  the  famous  Junius  Letters  before  they 
saw  the  light  of  print.  This  seems  to  us  a  very  in- 
secure and  fortuitous  mode  of  communication,  but  it  is  a 
thoroughly  traditional  English  one,  and  is  yet  largely 
used.  At  many  an  English  inn  I  have  seen  stuck  in 
a  glass  behind  the  bar  or  placed  upright  against  the 
shelf  or  decanter  on  the  sideboard  broad,  square  letters 
addressed  in  the  modern  conventional  English  hand  to 
"  Mr.  Harry  Chauncey,"  or  "William  Henry  Howard, 
Esqre.,"  frequenters  of  the  hostelry,  who  get  their  home 
letters  here  just  as  their  fathers  did  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  This  unconventional  post-office  is  generally 
in  charge  of  the  barmaid,  who  is,  in  fact,  an  institution 
of  the  place,  and  the  "  next  friend"  of  everybody  who 
comes  about  it. 

The  MSS.  of  the  Junius  Letters  were  left  at  thih 
Somerset  Tavern,  addressed  to  "  Mr.  Woodfall, 
printer,"  who  probably  ate  his  midday  meal  or  spent 
his  evenings  here.  His  shop,  still  here,  is  about  three 
minutes7  walk  from  the  tavern  and  behind  it.  It  is 
now  as  then  a  printing-office,  and  the  name  boldly 
o  18* 


210  LONDON. 

painted  on  the  wall  is  the  same, — Woodfall.    The  letters 
were  left  at  the  tavern  by  a  boy. 

As  a  picture  this  inn  is  the  least  interesting  of  those 
mentioned.  The  old  house  is  the  same,  but  it  has  been 
remodelled  throughout  within,  after  the  style  of  a 
modern  hotel,  and  a  drink  ing-saloon  of  the  ordinary 
pattern  pushed  out  so  as  to  give  a  street  entrance. 
Historically  it  is  a  mere  shell.  The  old  "interior" 
and  the  charm  of  the  old  life  are  both  gone. 

"  The  Rainbow,"  No.  15  Fleet  Street,  is  consecrated 
with  the  elusive  memories  of  Shakespeare.  Here,  too, 
it  is  said,  came  Ben  Jonson  and  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  and  Donne,  and  flashed  wit  and  jest  and  story 
with  the  London  actors  of  that  long-ago  day.  The 
Rainbow,  in  early  history,  stood  probably  in  a  garden 
between  the  Thames  and  the  Strand.  The  garden  pos- 
sibly became  a  court;  but  if  so,  now  the  court — gone 
after  the  garden — is  built  solidly  over,  and  the  Rain- 
bow, away  off  the  street  and  enveloped  in  a  solid  mass 
of  building,  is' reached  by  a  long  and  very  narrow  pas- 
sage— a  mere  right  of  way — which  opens  on  Fleet 
Street  almost  unperceived. 

The  Rainbow  has  kept  pace  with  the  times,  carefully 
preserving  the  old  features  of  the  place,  the  old  charac- 
teristics, and  the  old  life.  The  comfortable  building  is 
the  same.  The  old-fashioned  bar  is  still  there  with 
the  little  office, — for  the  Rainbow  was  and  is  a  spacious 
hostelry, — the  two  together  presided  over  still  by  that 
remarkable  young  woman  who,  in  the  English  inn  or 
hotel  of  average  size,  does  civilly  and  agreeably  and 
thoroughly  the  duties  of  three  conspicuous  American 
officials, — the  hotel-clerk,  the  barkeeper,  and  the  book- 
keeper and  cashier.  The  pleasant  fire  in  the  open 
chimney-place  and  the  shining  pewter  are  still  there. 
The  perfect  but  unpretentious  service  is  the  same  which 
Englishmen  shared  with  you  two  hundred  years  ago. 
The  heavy  spotless  linen,  the  clear-cut  glass,  are  prob- 


HISTORIC  TAVERNS.  211 

ably  of  our  own  day.  Here  you  get  a  good  modern 
London  dinner,  based,  however,  on  the  old  English 
tradition  of  two  or  three  plain  courses.  The  wines  are 
traditionally  known  and  excellent, — solid  in  body  and 
in  price.  Old  usages,  too,  are  as  far  as  possible  scru- 
pulously observed.  Your  haunch  of  mutton  or  great 
roast  of  beef  is  wheeled  up  to  your  table  and  your  cut 
taken  off  in  your  presence  and  under  your  own  direction 
if  you  are  particular.  The  custom  of  this  place,  as  I 
saw  it,  was  of  a  high  and  most  reputable  kind,  solid 
bankers,  merchants,  and  lawyers,  apparently  doing  busi- 
ness in  that  locality, — the  same  class  of  men  who  for 
two  hundred  years  have  been  using  it  in  midday  and 
afternoon.  In  the  evening  there  is  probably  more 
smoke  and  wine  and  clinking  glasses. 

The  Rainbow  lias  a  further  and  better-authenticated 
historical  interest  as  having  been  a  "  coffee-house,"  a 
younger  institution  in  English  history  than  the  tavern, 
and  one  that  passed  at  once  and  largely  into  literature. 
The  first  house  opened  in  London  for  the  drinking  of 
this  new  beverage  was  in  1650,  the  second  was  in  1652, 
and  was  the  Rainbow.  It  figures  as  a  fashionable  resort 
in  the  Spectator.  The  drinking  of  coffee  instead  of  ale  or 
canary  was  considered  rather  a  swell  thing  when  it  was 
first  introduced.  It  was  decried  by  the  common  people 
as  effeminate,  an  affectation  of  fashion,  and  a  sign  of 
degeneracy  on  the  part  of  Englishmen,  and  the  coffee- 
houses were  denounced  by  the  lower  classes,  and  looked 
on  very  much  as  our  most  exclusive  club-houses  are 
now. 

Previously  to  the  opening  of  the  coffee-house  the 
Rainbow  seems  to  have  been  a  book-stand.  "  At  the 
Signe  of  the  Rainbow  in  Fleete  Streat,  near  the  Inner 
Temple,"  is  an  imprint  of  the  early  part  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century.  It  is  probable  that  it  was  in  this 
connection  its  name  became  linked  with  those  of  Shake- 
speare and  Ben  Jonson. 

The  Rainbow  is  an  excellent  hostelry  of  this  day,  as 


212  LONDON. 

well  as  of  two  hundred  years  ago,  and  the  American 
traveller  who  delights  in  clothing  himself  with  the 
wealth  of  the  associations  of  the  past  as  he  travels  will 
serve  himself  well  by  putting  up  here,  if  he  chooses 
this  locality  of  the  town,  instead  of  at  the  common  run 
of  hotels  advertised  in  the  guides  and  time-tables.  He 
will  be  thoroughly  comfortable  and  well  fed,  and  will 
see  at  once  an  English  "  interior."  He  will  be  inside 
of  a  real  old  English  inn,  not  merely  honeycombed  in 
a  cell  of  a  mammoth  modern  caravansary. 

The  Mitre  lives  in  tradition  as  the  special  haunt  of 
Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  and  the  brilliant  group  that  clus- 
ters around  his  rude,  strong  person  as  its  central  figure, 
— Burke,  Goldsmith,  Garrick,  Boswell, — and  I  suppose 
it  was,  for  you  can  see  at  once  the  reason  of  it  being 
chosen  as  a  stated  rendezvous.  It  was  a  case  of  natu- 
ral selection.  Goldsmith  lived  immediately  back,  in 
Mitre  court ;  Dr.  Johnson  just  across  the  way,  in  Bolt 
court ;  while  Burke  had  his  chambers  in  the  contiguous 
"  Temple,"  and,  I  presume,  Boswell,  too.  From  the 
central  point  of  "  The  Mitre"  they  could  all  stagger 
home  at  midnight,  covering  the  least  possible  distance, 
and  with  comparative  safety.  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds, 
who  perhaps  joined  them  sometimes,  on  more  formal 
occasions, — for  he  moved  more  generally  in  a  society  in 
which  Johnson  did  not  go, — lived  quite  near,  first  in 
St.  Martin's  Lane,  and  then  in  Leicester  Square,  then  & 
very  fashionable  neighborhood. 

The  Mitre  Tavern  is  found  somewhat  off  Fleet  Street, 
in  Mitre  court,  a  quiet,  retired  little  recess  or  eddy.  In 
front  rolls  down  from  the  Strand  the  troubled  current  of 
London  life,  in  the  rear  the  busy  waters  of  the  Thames, 
but  the  Mitre  is  as  still  as  a  cloister.  The  suddenness 
with  which  in  a  few  feet  one  can  turn,  in  London, 
from  the  surging  roar  of  the  noisy,  driven  streets  into 
absolute  stillness  is  one  of  the  dramatic  surprises  of 
the  city.  Oliver  Goldsmith's  grave,  close  by  the  fa- 


HISTORIC  TAVERNS.  218 

mous  Norman  Round  Temple,  the  altar  of  the  old  cru- 
sading knights,  lies  only  a  few  hundred  yards  from  his 
homely  tavern,  in  the  hush  of  a  country  churchyard. 
Shut  your  eyes,  and  you  would  almost  fancy  the  fra- 
grance of  the  fresh  grass  and  English  herbs  and  expect 
to  hear  the  birds  sing.  You  look  around  you  and  see 
not  a  green  blade 'or  tiny  flower  or  a  solitary  spot  where 
one  might  spring, — nothing  but  stone  and  crumbling 
effigies  and  tottering  buttresses  and  high  gray  walls. 
Again,  out  of  the  thronging  precinct  of  Westminster, 
throbbing  with  the  pulses  of  the  Parliament  of  an  em- 
pire, you  pass  in  a  few  steps  into  the  peaceful  cloisters 
of  the  Abbey  and  plunge  at  once  into  the  Middle  Ages. 
And  so  the  close  of  St.  Paul's  and  dozens  of  places. 

In  a  part  of  the  spacious  building,  by  the  wny,  shut- 
ting off  the  Mitre  court  from  Fleet  Street,  but  fronting 
on  it,  and  known  as  the  Mitre  property,  are  found  the 
London  offices  of  the  New  York  Herald,  an  historical 
succession  worthy  of  being  noted  as  something  more 
than  a  passing  coincidence.  As  the  representative  of 
the  most  advanced  journalism  of  the  time,  The  Herald 
is  the  legitimate  successor  of  The  Rambler,  Spectator, 
and  the  Idler,  and  occupies,  with  something  of  right, 
the  abandoned  tribune  of  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson. 

In  the  interior  of  the  Mitre,  which  evidently  stands 
now  much  as  it  did  a  century  ago,  yoii  can  readily  trace 
the  outline  of  the  scenes  which  passing  allusions  in 
literature  and  tradition  have  made  so  famous^ — the 
dimly-lighted  room  dedicated  by  long  pre-emption  to 
private  uses,  the  smoke-laden  atmosphere,  the  brandy 
and  hot  water,  the  white-clay  pipes  and  tobacco,  the 
MSS.  and  current  pamphlets,  and  the  long  table  from 
whose  head,  night  after  night,  the  stout  old  Bohemian 
Tory  preached  ponderous  philosophy,  or  railed  at  the 
Scotch  and  hurled  angry  invective  against  the  American 
traitors  making  history  at  Philadelphia  and  Lexington. 
A  bronze  bust  of  Dr.  Johnson  fills  a  niche  above  the 
spot  where  his  chair  familiarly  stood,  and  placidly  re- 


214  LONDON. 

gards  to-day  those  nineteenth-century  customers  of  the 
Mitre  who  have  curiosity  or  influence  enough  to  find 
their  way  into  the  little  back  bar-room,  which  is  the 
arcanum  of  the  house. 

It  is  fair  to  say  that  there  are  several  other  Mitre 
taverns  in  London  which  claim  the  honors  and  prestige 
of  those  distinguished  literary  connections,  but  the 
weight  of  evidence  and  the  argument  from  localities 
incline  to  the  one  I  am  describing,  and  whose  cheer  I 
have  tested. 

Contemporary  authority  of  the  best  kind  fixes  the 
Mitre  Tavern  of  Mitre  court,  Fleet  Street,  as  the  site 
of  the  traditional  Johnsonian  symposia.  I  have  no 
doubt,  however,  that  if  the  other  claimant  taverns  were 
in  existence  at  that  time  Dr.  Johnson  and  his  friends 
gave  them  a  visit. 

"  The  Cheshire  Cheese,"  another  favorite  haunt  of 
Dr.  Johnson,  well  known  in  history  and  literature,  is 
perhaps  the  most  unchanged  of  all  these  taverns,  and 

fives  one  the  best  idea  of  the  life  of  those  old  times, 
t  is  very  plain,  and  all  the  marked  features  of  the  old 
style  are  preserved  with  fidelity.  In  fact,  it  is  not 
preservation,  but  continuance.  I  sipped  some  canary 
here  for  a  half-hour  one  night  with  a  friend  distin- 
guished in  journalism  and  politics  and  deeply  versed 
in  the  scholarship  of  English  literature,  and  spent 
some  time  watching  the  custom  and  incident  of  the 
evening,  and  I  am  sure  that  our  eyes  beheld  the  very 
same  sights  and  objects  which  of  old  met  the  vision  of 
Burke  and  Goldsmith  and  Garrick, — the  same  men 
and  the  same  things.  It  stands  in  Wine-Office  court, 
just  across  the  street  and  nearly  opposite  to  Mitre 
court. 

One-half  of  the  large  room  is  fitted  up  with  plain, 
bare,  wooden  tables  of  the  simplest  kind  of  construc- 
tion, that  would  seat  four  to  six  persons.  Each  table 
stands  in  a  kind  of  stall,  formed  by  the  high,  upright 


HISTORIC  TAVERNS.  215 

backs  of  the  straight,  hard,  uncovered  seats.  The  vhole 
looks  like  the  great  wooden  pews  in  our  old-fashioned 
churches.  The  seats  are  about  as  uncomfortable  as 
they  can  be,  but  the  English — as  their  Parliament 
House  and  the  church  pew  (their  evolution)  attest — 
have  little  idea  of  the  luxury  of  rest.  A  large  open 
space  of  sanded  floor,  with  arm-chairs  and  a  small  table 
or  two  of  freer  position,  complete  the  room.  An  open 
chimney-place,  with  a  burning  grate,  on  which  fizzled 
away  a  kettle  of  boiling  water,  gave  a  cosey  and  domes- 
tic air  to  the  room.  At  the  right-hand  corner  of  this 
fireplace  stood  the  chair  of  Dr.  Johnson.  Long  white 
earthen  pipes,  fresh,  and  some  pouches,  evidently  private, 
of  tobacco,  lay  on  the  mantel-shelf.  Two  good  but 
somewhat  smoke-discolored  oil  paintings  of  old  ser- 
vants of  the  inn  hung  on  the  walls.  Their  legend 
recited  that  they  were  contributed  as  a  mark  of  respect 
by  gentlemen  who  frequented  the  inn,  and  they  were 
dedicated  as  special  heirlooms  to  pass  with  the  tavern 
property. 

The  Cheshire,  contrasted  with  its  famous  fellows,  is 
"poor  but  respectable."  Everything  was  extremely 
plain,  simple,  and  almost  coarse,  but  all  was  neat, 
clean,  and  honest;  the  quality  both  of  food  and  wines 
good  for  the  cost.  In  this  it  is,  as  it  has  been  probably 
for  centuries,  thoroughly  solid  and.  English.  The 
cheaper  inn  in  England  is  not  a  mere  dirty  and  pre- 
tentious imitation  of  a  higher  class  of  house.  It  has 
its  own  character  and  is  proud  of  it,  and  as  far  as  it 
goes  is  solid,  good,  and  honest;  and,  as  a  rule,  this 
holds  good  with  other  English  things  than  inns,  and 
also  with  the  people. 

It  was  from  this  tavern  one  day/  when  Goldsmith 
was  confined  in  it  by  the  landlady  for  his  score,  and 
watched  by  a  bailiff  outside  the  door,  that  Dr.  Johnson 
went  out  and  sold  a  MS.  for  him  for  sixty  pounds. 
The  MS.  was  the  "  Vicar  of  Wakefield." 

"  The  Cock,"  201  Fleet  Street,  a  tavern  of  the  same 


216  LONDON. 

age  and  general  character  and  uses  as  the  Rainbow  or 
the  Mitre,  has  more  modern  associations,  its  sponsor 
in  literature  and  chiefest  treasure  being  Alfred  Ten- 
nyson,— 

"  O  plump  head- waiter  of  the  Cock  I" 

The  plump  head-waiter  is  still  living  and  on  duty, 
and  the  junior  bar  of  London  assure  you  that  the  best 
"  bitter"  in  the  town  is  to  be  had  in  this  most  reputa- 
ble hostelry,  which  bears  a  diploma  from  the  Poet 
Laureate, — 

"To  each  his  perfect  pint  of  stout." 

You  sit  in  old-fashioned  stalls,  as  at  the  Cheshire 
Cheese, — the  floors  are  wooden  and  uncovered,  as  at 
all  these  taverns, — your  quarters  are  rather  contracted, 
but  your  company  eminently  respectable.  There  is 
some  old  oak  carving  over  the  mantel-piece,  and  the 
whole  interior  is  said  to  be  unaltered  from  the  time 
of  James  the  First.  The  Cock  is  nearly  opposite  the 
Rainbow,  and,  like  it,  imbedded  in  a  conglomerate 
mass  of  masonry,  representing  the  resistless  encroach- 
ments of  centuries,  and  you  reach  it  now  only  by  an 
inconspicuous  alley-way.  It  is  now,  too,  a  retreat.  It 
was  to  the  Cock  that  Pepys  was  wont  to  take  Mistress 
Knipp  and  give  her  little  dinners,  much  to  the  distress 
of  his  wife.  "  Thence  to  the  Cock  Alehouse  and  drank 
and  eat  a  lobster,  and  mightily  merry  •"  it  was  a  Mis- 
tress Pierce  this  time,  and  Pepys  faithfully  relates  the 
domestic  explanations  which  were  necessary  to  explain 
these  tavern  outings,  to  which  he  was  apparently  fonder 
of  treating  his  neighbors'  wives  than  his  own. 

The  Whyte  Harte,  where  Jack  Cade's  peasant  army 
disbanded,  and  in  whose  court-yard  Shakespeare's  plays 
were  probably  acted,  is  still  an  extant  house.  It  was 
burned  down  in  1676,  but  was  rebuilt  in  the  old  style, 
wooden  balconies  and  all.  It  was  from  these  interior 


HISTORIC  TAVERNS.  217 

wooden  balconies  that  the  frequenters  of  the  inn  watched 
the  open-air  performance  below  on  the  rude  flag-stoned 
pavement  of  the  court-yard.  It  was  a  rude  stage,  but 
a  common  one,  in  the  simple  fashion  of  those  days. 

George's  Coffee-house,  at  213  Fleet  Street,  was  fre- 
quented by  Shenstone,  uwho  found  his  warmest  wel- 
come at  an  inn." 

The  dead  centuries  take  form  and  flesh  and  color 
and  grow  wonderfully  near  as  you  sit  in  one  of  these 
old  hostelries  and  see  the  life  of  London  flowing  through 
it  very  much  just  as  it  flowed  a  hundred  years  ago, — 
the  same  walls,  the  same  furniture,  the  same  cheer,  the 
same  order  and  service,  and  much  the  same  manner  of 
men. 

It  is  a  little  difficult  for  us  to  understand  in  our  day 
the  conspicuous  part  the  tavern  played  in  the  lives  of 
men  whose  names  now  sound  so  grandly,  and  whose 
forms,  swelling  to  historic  proportions,  are  so  imposing. 
We  must  bear  in  mind,  however,  a  number  of  things. 
Life  was  certainly  somewhat  ruder  than  it  is  now,  and, 
again,  the  inn  of  those  days  was  relatively  highec  than 
it  is  now.  It  was  certainly  much  higher  than  our 
American  conception  of  a  country  tavern,  which,  with 
its  "  bar-room"  and  noise,  has  nothing  in  common  with 
the  quiet,  home-like  English  inn  of  to-day, — the  inn 
of  Shenstone  and  Coleridge. 

Again,  there  were  no  clubs  in  those  days, — none  at 
all  in  our  modern  sense,  and  but  few  of  any  kind, — -and 
the  tavern  was  the  club  of  the  community.  Here  men 
of  all  kinds  met  and  gathered  in  circles,  according  to 
their  several  tastes, — sometimes  in  the  private  apart- 
ments, sometimes  in  the  common  room.  The  "private 
bar"  is  now,  perhaps,  a  survival  of  those  usages.  Dr. 
Johnson  and  his  friends  frequently,  according  to  tra- 
dition, sat  in  the  public  room,  dominating  it  both  by 
their  numbers  and  by  the  power  and  brilliancy  of  their 
conversation  A  stranger  would  probably  have  been  a 
K  19 


218  LONDON. 

little  crowded  down  unless  he  chanced  to  have  been  a 
congenial  mind.  Here  came  from  evening  to  evening 
the  young  barristers  from  the  adjacent  Temple  and  law 
inns,  the  worthy  tradesmen  of  the  neighborhood,  who 
lived  above  their  shops  and  banks  (the  famous  "Childs" 
bank  was  close  to  the  Mitre),  the  writers  for  the 
meagre  journals  of  the  day.  Perhaps  a  stranger  from 
the  country  counties  occasionally  dropped  in,  or  per- 
chance an  adventurous  traveller  from  Penn's  far-off 
Sylvania  or  Mary  Land.  The  place  was  the  primitive 
"  Saturday  Night  Club"  of  a  century  or  more  ago,  in 
London,  and  of  a  rather  humble  class. 

For  these  great  names,  we  must  remember,  were 
not  in  good  society  at  this  tavern  stage  of  their  exist- 
ence. Shakespeare  was,  in  early  life  at  least,  something 
of  a  vagabond.  Ben  Jonson  was  a  bricklayer ;  some 
of  his  work  stood  very  near  the  Cheshire  Cheese. 
Later  down,  Dr.  Johnson  was  to  the  last  a  congenial 
Bohemian.  He  was  the  old  man  of  the  party,  who 
gathered  around  him  young  Burke  and  Garrick  and 
Goldsmith  and  other  young  men,  unknown,  or  who 
had  just  come  up  from  the  country  to  try  their  fortunes 
in  famous  London  town.  Boswell  was,  perhaps,  the 
nearest  to  the  gentleman  of  the  crowd.  The  fine  gen- 
tlemen of  London  did  not  come  to  these  taverns,  nor 
did  Burke,  likely,  and  many  of  the  others  when  they 
had  made  their  mark  and  won  fame.  Tennyson  does 
not  now  frequent  the  "  Cock."  These  tavern  days  that 
have  gone  into  literature,  and  by  which  we  know  them, 
were  the  days  of  their  youth  and  poverty  and  obscurity. 

It  is  a  striking  reflection  on  the  eternity  and  immor- 
tality of  the  human  side  of  our  existence,  and  of  the 
littleness  or  nothingness  of  business  or  fashion  or  co- 
temporary  success,  that  what  lives  of  these  men  is  the 
hour  they  gave  to  rest  and  the  play  of  human  feeling. 
The  point  at  which  they  dropped  their  routine  toil, 
their  daily  life  of  publishers  and  business  and  briefs 
and  writs  and  fees  and  wages,  was  the  point  at  which 


HISTORIC  TAVERNS.  219 

they  touched  fame  and  the  common  heart  of  generations 
and  nations  yet  to  come. 

A  few  hundred  years  ago  the  tavern  was  the  club 
and  the  newspaper  of  the  community.  But  it  was  also 
something  more.  Public  opinion  not  only  was  formed 
at  these  houses,  but  passed  into  tradition  and  was  per- 
petuated by  them.  One  can  read  the  history  of  all 
England  to-day  in  the  names  of  its  inns.  When  our 
English  ancestors  wished  to  honor  a  cause  or  a  man 
they  wrote  their  names  on  a  tavern  signboard  and 
swung  it  out  to  posterity. 

Thus,  the  St.  George  and  the  Green  Dragon  record 
the  familiar  mythic  legends  of  our  earliest  history  ;  the 
White  Horse  was  the  victorious  standard  of  the  Saxons 
when  they  invaded  England, — the  battle-flag  of  Hen- 
gist  and  Horsa;  the  Angel  is  a  mutilated  survival  of  a 
favorite  old  sign,  the  "  Salutation  of  the  Angel"  to  the 
Blessed  Virgin,  recalling  a  time  when  the  Ave  Maria 
was  the  evening  song  of  England  ;  the  Saracen's  Head 
is  a  record  of  the  crusades;  the  Mitre  comes  down 
from  the  old  days  of  Church  and  State,  and  the  Church 
first.  Even  as  late  as  the  last  century  Boswell,  writing 
of  the  Fleet  Street  "  Mitre,"  says  Dr.  Johnson  ap- 
proved the  "  orthodox  High-Church  tone  of  its  name." 
In  the  "Cross-Keys,"  which  is  still  a  familiar  siini  in 
many  towns  of  Pennsylvania,  few  of  us  will  recognize 
the  crossed  keys  of  St.  Peter,  but  that  is  just  what  they 
are, — the  very  same  sign  that  may  be  seen  on  the  front  of 
the  great  St.  Peter's  at  Rome.  The  White  Swan  is  the 
device  of  Edward  of  Lancaster  and  the  White  Hart  of 
Richard  the  Second.  The  humble  Blue  Pig  is  a  sur- 
vival of  the  Blue  Boar,  the  crest  of  Richard  III.  The 
Rose  is  the  badge  of  the  Tudors,  and  the  rose  and  the 
portcullis  will  be  found  blazoned  alike  on  cathedral 
and  tavern  all  over  England.  The  Bear  is  the  emblem 
of  the  Leicesters,  the  Antelope  of  the  Bohuns,  and, 
indeed,  the  family  arms  of  all  England  are  carved  and 


220  LONDON. 

painted  over  all  the  land  on  its  inns, — the  rude  Herald's 
College  of  the  people.  When  once  one  becomes  a  little 
familiar  with  these  crests,  it  is  always  easy  to  tell  in 
what  part  of  the  country  one  is  by  looking  at  the  village 
inns.  This  adoption  of  the  family  crest  as  a  tavern 
sign  is  very  natural,  as  these  country  inns  are  generally 
kept  by  retired  servants  of  the  great  families  of  the 
place, — a  fact  which,  in  turn,  accounts  largely  for  their 
comfort  and  excellent  service. 

This  political  nomenclature  of  the  inns  is  proof  that 
they  filled  the  office  of  clubs  in  our  communities. 
There  were  no  Union  League  and  Tammany  clubs  to 
gather  up  and  organize  political  opinion,  but  the  poli- 
ticians of  every  faith  did  have  their  special  taverns, 
where  the  men  of  each  cause  could  meet,  strengthen 
each  other,  and  propagate  their  ideas.  The  old  Eng- 
lish feeling  had  its  White  Horses,  the  Church  party 
their  Cross-Keys  and  Mitres,  the  Xa^ionalists  their 
Crowns  and  King's  Heads. 

It  is  solid  evidence  of  the  social  advance  of  our  land 
that  we  have  dropped  this  usage  of  naming  taverns  or 
hotels  as  an  expression  either  of  popular  esteem  or  of 
political  honor.  There  are  a  few  Washington  and 
Jefferson  and  Lafayette  houses,  that  have  come  down 
from  the  Revolution,  and  a  scattering  Jackson  tavern, 
but  the  habit  about  ended  with  the  rude  time  and  life 
of  which  Jackson  was  the  last  distinguished  exponent. 
We  have  Lincoln  Universities  now,  but  no  Lincoln 
Hotels,  and  there  are  no  Giant  or  Sherman  or  Stan  ton 
or  Hancock  Taverns,  although  we  have  just  passed  the 
throes  of  a  civil  war. 

The  tavern  is  no  longer  a  factor  in  American  society. 

LONDON. 


SCOTLAND. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

ENTERING    SCOTLAND. 

THE  SCOTCH  BLOOD  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES — STRONG  STAMP 
OF  THE  SCOTCH  CHARACTER  ON  OUR  NATION — THE  ROMAN 
CATHOLIC  AND  PRESBYTERIAN  CLANS — MARGARET  WILSON. 

As  you  travel  north  ward  from  the  heated  and  murky 
fogs  of  London  a  change  conies  gradually  over  the 
scene.  The  smiling  harvests  of  grain  and  corn  give 
way  to  slatternly-looking  turnip-fields ;  the  trains  and 
coaches  advertise  to  run  on  "  lawful  days;"  the  children 
by  the  wayside  grow  barelegged  and  barefooted ;  green 
hills  and  meadows  are  replaced  by  brown  and  red 
ranges,  whose  infinite  lines,  stretching  out  one  beyond 
the  other,  sweep  out  against  the  sky ;  the  hats  of  the 
men  diminish  to  rimless  cloth  caps  ;  the  petticoats  of  the 
women  shorten  and  thicken  ;  bright  shocks  of  flaming 
red  and  fair  blond  yellow  hair  vary  the  rather  neutral 
sameness  of  tlie  English  head  ;  the  naked  knees  of  the 
men  emerge;  whisky  redolent  of  peat  becomes  the 
regular  station  refreshment,  taken  with  a  serious  and 
Bolemn  air  ;  old  ladies  appear  in  the  cars  reading  "  The 
Christian  Herald,"  and  seeming  to  find  great  satisfac- 
tion therein  ;  the  faces  at  each  passing  railway  station 
become  more  and  more  reflective,  lined,  and  joyless; 
red  heather,  black-footed  Cheviot  sheep,  tartan  plaids 
and  half-military  kilts  greet  your  eye  for  the  first  time 
on  their  native  heath  :  you  are  in  Scotland. 

I  have  made  a  pretty  thorough  tour  of  this  country, 
which  has  done  so  much  for  our  land,  and  which  is  it- 
self so  crowded  with  incident  in  the  history  of  freedom. 
Starting  from  Edinboro',  I  have  travelled  by  the  great 

223 


224  SCOTLAND. 

Highland  Railway — the  backbone  of  Scotland — to  Inver- 
ness, the  capital  of  the  Highland  region ;  thence  down- 
ward by  the  scenic  Caledonian  chain  of  lakes, — the 
Rhine  of  Scotland  ;  thence  from  Oban  out  to  lona  and 
through  the  Hebrides  and  back ;  thence  across-country 
by  stage  and  rail  to  Aberdeen  ;  thence  back  again  by  a 
lower  route  to  Stirling ;  and  then  by  the  classic  Lochs 
Lomond  and  Katrine  into  Glasgow,  and  from  there 
again  into  Argyllshire. 

It  is  interesting  and  instructive  to  see  how  thoroughly 
the  Scotch  mind  has  stamped  itself  on  our  country,  on 
our  manners,  speech,  and  habit  of  thought.  Although 
the  pure  Scotch  migration  to  the  United  States  has  been 
comparatively  small  as  weighed,  for  instance,  against 
the  German  or  Irish,  it  has  impressed  its  force  more 
definitely  and  lastingly  than  either.  It  almost  seems  to 
be  the  substratum  of  our  national  character. 

In  Scotland  one  meets  all  the  time  customs,  usages, 
tones,  inflections  of  speech,  incidents,  and  little  things 
of  all  kinds  which  recall  the  interior  country  life  of  our 
own  land,  and  show  how  thoroughly  we  have  been 
cradled  in  these  hills.  It  is  from  these  cold,  bracing 
mountains  that  we  get,  first  and  last,  and  best  of  all, 
that  unquestionable  love  of  liberty  and  sense  of  personal 
independence  which  has  made  us  what  we  are, — which 
may  be  uncomfortable  or  unpleasant  in  some  of  its  man- 
ifestations and  inimical  to  vast  undertakings,  but  which 
is  the  salt  of  true  political  and  social  advancement. 
Scotland  is  a  land  of  small  undertakings,  of  small  bus- 
inesses, and  of  small  fortunes,  because  the  Scotchman  is 
not  a  ready  tool  or  executive  instrument  for  the  uses 
of  others ;  but  then  he  is  free, — the  head  of  his  own  little 
home,  the  master  of  his  own  movements. 

While  we  have  secured  this  strong  bone  and  sinew 
of  the  Scotchman  as  the  framework  of  our  new  national 
life,  we  have  clothed  it  with  a  much  more  generous 
body.  We  are  essentially  eclectic  and  able  to  take  and 
assimilate  the  best  of  all  other  nations,  peoples,  and 


ENTERING  SCOTLAND.  225 

races.  Now,  the  Scot  is  a  Celt,  and  the  Celtic  blood  by 
itself  has  never  attained  very  great  things.  It  is,  how- 
ever, the  very  best  flux  to  mix  with  other  bloods.  Even 
crossed  with  itself  it  improves.  The  Scotch-Irishman  is 
a  much  stronger  man  and  race  than  either  the  Scotch  or 
the  Irish  by  itself.  It  is  through  this  fortunate  blend- 
ing that  it  affects  particularly  our  national  character. 

The  old  distinctive  characteristics  linger  longest  in  the 
individual.  My  own  blood  in  one  line  comes  directly 
from  Argyllshire,  and  I  was  interested,  of  course,  in 
studying  the  characteristics  of  this  especial  people, 
whom  I  do  not  think  the  lapse  of  the  one  hundred  and 
eighty  years  since  I  left  them  have  much  changed. 
Manners,  of  course,  have  softened,  ideas  have  broadened 
and  liberalized,  but  the  old  essential  tibre  and  charac- 
teristics are  there  yet.  It  is  said  of  this  people;  that 
"  they  never  forget  a  benefit  or  forgive  a  wrong,"  and 
this  rule  of  blood,  whatever  may  be  thought  of  it  as  a 
rule  of  morals,  is  admirably  adapted  to  perpetuate  race 
instincts  and  individuality. 

And  this  is  certainly  so  here.  The  friendships  and 
hatreds,  the  loyalties  and  enmities,  of  hundreds  of  years 
aim  are  all  extant  forces  yet  and  part  of  the  common 
life  of  the  people.  Often  the  remembrance  is  but  senti- 
mental, as  in  the  feeling  for  the  Stuarts,  but  it  is  there 
still  in  that  form.  The  Scotch  of  this  dav  sing  and 
play  the  old  Jacobite  songs  with  a  spirit  and  feeling 
and  power  of  emotion  that  in  Celtic  Paris  would  surely 
evoke  a  revolution. 

Families,  although  they  do  not  murder  each  other 
any  more,  retain  the  old  traditions  of  feuds  in  piam 
memoriam,  and  the  old  political  divisions  are  still  per- 
petuated in  a  variance  of  faith  and  Church  allegiance. 
The  old  loyalist  Scottish  clans  are  Roman  Catholic  yet, 
— staunch  and  devoted  and  true.  The  Protestant  ascen- 
dency in  Church  and  State  has  not  swerved  them,  and 
in  many  parts  of  Western  Scotland  you  still  find  small 
districts — rthe.clan  territories  of.  the  old.  .Stuart  lieges— 


226  SCOTLAND. 

which  are  thoroughly  Roman  Catholic,  high  and  low, 
poor  and  rich,  for  they  are  all  of  one  family, — the  chief 
and  his  followers. 

These  little  sections  seem  quite  an  anachronism  in 
stern  Presbyterian  Scotland,  but  they  serve  to  show  the 
undying  tenacity  with  which  the  Scotch  blood  follows 
a  friend  or  fights  a  foe. 

On  a  little  steamer  on  one  of  the  Highland  lakes  I 
fell  in  with  a  young  Roman  Catholic  priest, — a  gentle- 
man of  education  and  of  gentle  birth, — an  Englishman, 
but  on  duty  in  the  snows  of  Scotland. 

I  told  him  that  "  I  thought  he  looked  rather  cold  up 
here,  and  was  afraid  he  was  sowing  seed  on  pretty  rocky 
soil." 

He  replied,  laughing,  "  that  faith  would  remove  even 
Scotch  mountains." 

Another  priest,  of  more  years  and  with  his  enthusiasm 
tempered  by  larger  experience,  summed  up  the  situation 
more  practically  with  the  candid  statement  that  "  it  takes 
more  money  to  convert  a  Scotchman  than  he  is  worth." 

When  we  got  to  the  end  of  our  journey  the  young 
priest  showed  me,  with  a  good  deal  of  pride,  quite  a 
noble  pile  of  buildings  which  were  going  up  as  a  mon- 
astery and  school,  and  to  which  he  was  attached  as  one 
of  the  brothers.  I  did  not  think  it  right  to  dampen  his 
religious  ardor  and  hope,  even  if  I  had  had  the  heart  to 
do  so,  but  I  am  very  sure  that  he  will  not  get  a  Scotch 
boy  in  his  school  sa^e  from  the  old  Royalist  clans,  who 
are  already  Catholic,  and  would  remain  so  without 
schools  or  care.  As  he  was  an  English  gentleman, 
however,  his  own  faith  was  probably  a  matter  of  descent 
and  family  pride, — I  mean  in  the  good  sense  of  that 
word. 

It  is  very  curious,  indeed,  to  observe  how  all  along 
here  a  man's  religion,  or  his  Church  relations  rather, 
follow  as  an  obligation  to  certain  family  traditions  or  to 
a  family's  position.  Even  the  4iead  of  a  great  house 
does  not  presume  to  lead  it  or  dictate  to  it  in  this  mat- 


ENTERING  SCOTLAND.  227 

ter.  He  simply  accepts  the  situation  to  which  he  has 
been  born,  respects  the  collective  sense  of  his  tribe  or 
clan,  and  puts  himself  at  the  head  of  it.  Said  a  very 
large  Scottish  landowner  of  high  rank  to  me  one  day 
walking  over  his  estates  :  "  Two-thirds  of  my  tenants 
go  to  the  kirk,  and  I  think,  therefore,  I  ought  to  go, 
too.  Don't  you  think  so  ?"  I  unqualifiedly  said  u  Yes." 

This  gentleman's  taste,  in  all  probability,  would  have 
led  him  to  prefer  personally  the  highly-finished  and 
artistic  service  of  the  Established  Church  of  England, 
but  duty,  as  the  head  of  an  old  historical  family,  led 
him  every  Sunday  to  the  bare  walls  of  the  little  village 
kirk.  Now  the  country  kirk  of  Scotland  is  something 
"  bluer"  than  the  old-fashioned  Seceder  congregations 
of  Pennsylvania  in  earlv  days,  —  harder  benches, 
longer  psalms,  just  as  disjointed  tunes,  longer  prayers, 
longer  Scripture  readings  and  more  of  them,  and  a  ser- 
mon utterly  unrestrained  by  any  sense  of  time. 

For  the  same  reason,  many  of  the  Scotch  nobility  are 
Liberals  in  politics  because  their  family  and  clan  have 
been  Whigs  in  past  times. 

Scotland,  politically,  belongs  to  the  "  Liberal"  party, 
lords  and  people  naturally  inclining  that  way  by  reason 
of  their  blood  and  history.  It  flows  naturally  from 
their  almost  fierce  sense  of  independence,  which  shows 
itself  everywhere. 

I  have  often  talked  with  very  humble  members  of 
the  "  Free  Kirk  of  Scotland,"  the  people's  Church. 

"  Is  not  the  difference  between  you  and  the  Estab- 
lished Church  only  one  of  church  government?" 

"  No ;  it  is  something  a  great  deal  deeper  than  a 
question  of  government  when  the  queen  or  the  govern- 
ment can  send  down  a  minister  to  us  against  our  will." 

"  Would  such  a  thing  ever  be  done  ?  Has  it  ever 
been  done?" 

"  I  don't  know.  It  is  enough  that  it  can  be  done. 
We  will  never  allow  such  an  authority.  It  is  not 
right." 


228  SCOTLAND. 

And  the  feeling  with  which  such  words  were  always 
uttered  showed  that  it  was  a  real  matter  of  principle 
and  belief,  for  which  the  Scotch  peasant  or  croftsman 
of  to-day  would  sacrifice  comfort  and  advancement,  or 
fight,  or,  if  needs  be,  die,  just  as  he  has  done  again  and 
again  for  generations. 

The  memory  of  these  humble  martyrs  or  affiants  for 
the  truth  is  cherished  everywhere  in  Scotland  in 
memorials  often  touching  in  their  rudeness.  Janet 
Geddes,  who  drove  the  Established  Church  of  England 
out  of  Scotland  with  a  three-legged  stool,  is  remembered 
with  a  good  deal  of  warmth  in  the  popular  heart.  In 
this  town  of  Stirling,  the  central  feature  of  the  fine 
park  cemetery  which  lies  grandly  on  a  castellated  hill, 
is  a  monument  to  Margaret  Wilson,  whose  story  is  a 
household  legend  in  Presbyterian  America,  and  whose 
death  is  one  of  the  most  wonderful  of  martyrdoms. 
This  young  girl  in  her  teens,  tied  to  a  stake  in  the 
Sol  way  tide,  died  bravely  and  calmly  rather  than 
acknowledge  the  Episcopal  supremacy  as  a  governing 
power  in  the  Church.  She  surely  did  not  understand 
the  full  scope  and  grasp  of  the  question, — could  not 
by  reason  of  her  years  and  want  of  education.  She 
only  knew  that  the  Stuarts  were  forcing  it  on  Scotland, 
that  it  was  a  threat  to  the  liberty  of  her  country  and  a 
danger  to  freedom,  and  she  willingly  gave  her  testimony 
against  it,  even  unto  death. 

The  monument  which  commemorates  this  grand  fact 
and  this  great  national  characteristic  is,  I  regret  to  say, 
in  the  very  worst  of  taste.  Some  marble  figures  are 
inclosed  in  a  glass  case  on  a  stone  pedestal.  The  color- 
less gla?s  is  bordered  with  strips  of  the  same  material 
in  deep  blue  and  light  green,  while  the  wliole  body  of 
the  monument  is  plastered  over  with  texts  and  multi- 
tudinous Scripture  references  too  bulky  for  any  particu- 
lar appositeness.  This  when  the  whole  Bible  and  all 
history  is  ringing  with  single  grand  words"  that  fit  the 
occasion! 


ENTERING  SCOTLAND.  229 

The  main  inscription  begins  with  a  gush  about  "  the 
virgin  martyr  of  the  ocean  wave,"  and  ends  with  the 
information  that  she  chose  to  die  "  rather  than  own  to 
Erastian  usurpation."  This  heroic  grave  is  one  of  the 
worst  instances  of  the  Scotch  want  of  taste  and  uncouth 
tendency  to  obtrude  theological  technicalities  every- 
where. 

While  I  was  looking  at  this  tomb  three  young  Scotch 
soldiers  with  kilts  were  slowly  working  out  the  cumber- 
some inscription,  and  one,  familiar  with  the  story,  was 
trying  to  tell  it  to  his  comrades,  apparently  recruits. 
He  naturally  found  some  difficulty  in  this,  as  u  Eras- 
tianism"  was  not  a  garrison  word.  He  struggled 
bravely  with  the  trouble,  however,  and  summed  up 
the  whole  matter  by  assenin^  that  she  was  right  any- 
how, and  died  because  she  was.  And  with  a  hearty 
oath  the  two  new  boys  confirmed  the  statement — lt  Ye-, 

and ,  she  was."  And  the  story  and  its 

lesson  went  rudely  down  to  another  generation. 

I  noticed  the  entire  evening  I  spent  in  this  old 
graveyard  that  this  grave  w  •  surrounded  by  humble, 
plain  people,  reading  its  barl  :::'ous  inscription  sorrow- 
fully, and  honoring  in  respectful  silence  the  martyr. 
Being  Scotch,  they  could  not  lay  a  flower  on  the  tomb 
or  kneel  in  prayer  at  the  grave,  as  French  women  or 
men  or  Italians  would  have  done  at  the  shrine  of  their 
saint;  but  they  were  taking  it  all  In,  nevertheless. 
Margaret  Wilson  died  in  1685.  Her  grave  and  her 
memory  are  as  green  as  if  the  relentless  waters'  had 
gone  over  her  young  body  only  yesterday.  They  arc 
the  facts  of  Stirling  remembered  in  the. common  heart 
before  all  the  deeds  of  the  hundred  chieftains  who  have 
fought  around  this  citadel  and  made  it  the  central  point 
of  Scottish  history.  Her  grave  lies  in  sight  of  twelve 
battle-fields  of  Scotland,  but  she  is  the  greatest  warrior 
of  all. 

We  owe  much  to  Scotland,  but  this  legacy  of  per- 
sonal independence  and  determination,  this  unwilling- 

20 


230  SCOTLAND. 

ness  ever  to  yield,  ever  to  submit  to  a  wrong,  ever  to 
compromise,  is  her  best  and  greatest  gift. 
STIRLING,  SCOTLAND. 


CHAPTER   XXV. 

SCOTTISH    NOTES. 

THE  LOWER  SIDE  OF  SCOTCH  LIFE — SCOTCH  WHISKEY  AND  ITS 
REIGN  —  THE  HARDNESS  OF  SCOTCH  POVERTY  —  HIGHER 
SCOTLAND— SCOTCH  THRIFT — SCOTCH  NEWSPAPERS — SCOTCH 
HOTELS — RURAL  SCOTLAND  GOING  FORWARD — THE  THEO- 
LOGICAL SCOT. 

LET  me  throw  together  some  observations  on  certain 
phases  of  Scotch  life  and  some  Scotch  institutions  as 
seen  in  a  pretty  extended  tour  of  six  weeks  over  all  the 
kingdom.  It  is  a  land  of  sharp  contrasts  and  salient 
features,  the  old  and  the  new  existing  yet  side  by  side, 
sometimes  fusing  but  sometimes  standing  apart. 

I  had  heard  much  of  the  bad  condition  of  the  lowest 
classes  in  Scotland,  but  was  hardly  prepared  for  the 
appalling  truth  as  exhibited  in  the  streets  of  their 
larger  towns.  There  is  a  misery  and  degradation  here 
which  is  perhaps  unequalled  in  any  civilized  land. 
There  is  a  dirtiness  that  I  think  surpasses  the  filth  of 
Italy,  and  it  is  unrelieved  by  bright  eyes  and  smiling 
faces  and  beautiful  forms  and  graceful  movement. 
Scotch  poverty  is  simple,  sullen,  vicious-looking  degra- 
dation. Instead  of  song  and  music  and  pleasing  lying, 
the  Scotch  lazzaroni  are  given  over  to  the  beastly  vices 
of  drunkenness  and  prostitution,  which  are  fearfully 
prevalent  and  whose  results  are  clearly  visible  on  the 
lower  streets  of  every  town  of  any  size  in  Scotland. 
Begging,  too,  is  prevalent,  and  the  squalid  mendicant, 
with  brutal  slouch  and  rum-burnt  visage,  stoutly  curses 
and  swears  at  you  when  you  refuse  him. 


SCOTTISH  NOTES,  231 

So  degraded  and  unclean  are  the  herds  who  swarm 
i^en  good  streets  that  in  Glasgow,  for  instance,  after 
slight,  I  have  left  the  pavement  and  taken  the  middle 
of  the  street  rather  than  run  the  risk  of  being  brushed 
against  by  beings  reeking  with  the  marks  and  odors  of 
disease,  filth,  and  uncleanness. 

But  the  saddest  feature  of  Scotch  degradation  is  the 
way  it  seems  to  harden  the  individual  and  drive  out 
everything  that  is  softening  or  gentle  or  relieving  in 
human  nature.  The  faces  of  the  poor  are  pinched, 
meagre,  calculating ;  their  voices  hardened  and  harsh  ; 
their  tones  angry  and  impatient;  their  eyes  sullen  and 
vicious.  Everything  of  light  and  hope  is  gone  even 
from  the  little  children  ;  all  i-  ungracious  and  unlovely. 
The  little  things  start  life  with  this  dreadful  heritage. 
Some  days  since,  on  the  outskirts  of  Stirling,  being  in 
some  doubt  at  the  forks  of  a  road,  I  asked  my  way  of 
a  little  girl  who,  with  bare  legs,  uncombed  hair,  ill  clad, 
and  no  bonnet,  was  swinging  alone  on  the  fence,  and 
gave  her  a  few  pennies.  The  child  seemed  confused  at 
being  kindly  spoken  to,  and  I  fear  the  gift  was  an  en- 
tirely new  revelation.  After  recovering  from  the  sur- 
prise the  little  thing,  with  a  look  of  wonder  still  on  her 
face,  and  extremely  grateful,  began  to  explain  the  way, 
offering  to  go  along,  and  very  anxious  to  do  something 
in  return.  It  was  painful  to  see  her  evident  attempt  to 
speak  in  pleasant,  gentle  tones  and  the  inexorable  fail- 
ure. Her  voice  was  already  hard  and  set,  and  against 
her  will  and  to  her  deep  mortification  and  distress  the 
words  would  only  come  out  in  the  old  harsh,  ungracious, 
ugly  tones, — the  only  sounds  she  knew. 

Again,  this  morning  in  Glasgow,  in  one  of  the  low 
streets  leading  to  the  great  cathedral,  which  now  stands 
in  a  dismal  and  dirty  quarter  of  the  town,  I  heard  a 
squalid,  degraded  woman,  who  was  carrying  a  wretched, 
meagre  babe  in  her  arms,  both  half  naked,  address  it 
thus :  "  Shet  up  your  cryin',  will  you  ?  I'll  choke  you 
ded  and  brek  your  hed  against  the  wall.  Whust  now !" 


232  SCOTLAND. 

The  woman  was  not  drunk.  It  was  her  own  child,  and 
the  words,  although  spoken  in  a  rude  and  rigid  tone, 
were  not  unkindly  meant.  They  were,  in  fact,  a 
Glasgow  1  illaby,  the  "  sounds  from  home'7  of  this 
quarter. 

Much  of  this  utter  lowness  and  degradation  of  Scotch 
poverty  comes  from  the  frightful  habits  of  drinking 
which  prevail  among  the  poorer  classes  of  men  and 
women,  but  this  will  not  account  for  it  all,  for  the 
drinking  itself  is,  in  part,  only  a  result  of  the  degrada- 
tion. The  Scotch  people  are  making  an  earnest  and 
desperate  fight  against  intemperance  all  over  Scotland, 
and  well  they  may,  for  a  more  shocking  exhibition  of 
national  drunkenness,  I  suppose,  is  not  to  be  seen  the 
world  over  than  that  which  protrudes  itself  everywhere 
on  the  traveller  in  this  land.  You  see  drunken  men 
reeling  in  the  streets,  and,  women,  too,  in  broad  day- 
light, and  often  quite  early  in  the  morning.  And  it  is 
not  confined  to  what  might  be  called  the  lowest  classes. 
I  frequently  see  venerable-looking  old  men  with  white 
hair,  and  whose  countenances  indicate  that  they  have 
led  fairly  intelligent  and  industrious  lives,  staggering 
blindly,  or,  as  is  more  often  the  case,  attempting  to 
hold  a  drunken  argument  with  any  passer-by  they  can 
fasten.  To-day  I  saw  in  this  town  of  Glasgow  a  very 
respectable-looking  young  woman  of  about  thirty,  very 
neatly  and  quite  well  dressed,  apparently  the  wife  of  a 
well-to-do  mechanic,  reeling  for  half  a  square  in  mid- 
day through  a  crowded  street.  Old  women,  gray-haired 
and  bent,  their  faces  bloated  and  burnt  naming  red  with 
years  of  drink,  meet  you  everywhere,  and  are  to  an 
American  stranger  the  marked  and  most  repulsive 
feature  of  the  begging  class. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  drinking-shops  and  small 
retail  shops  of  liquor  "  not  to  be  drunk  on  the  premises/' 
abound  in  all  the  streets.  Their  number  is  something 
ghastly ;  they  are  low,  dirty,  dingy,  and  squalid,  and 
in  front  of  them  hang  around  all  day  squads  of  vicious, 


SCOTTISH  NOTES.  233 

criminal-looking  young  men  with  that  villainous  slouch 
and  sullen  gait  so  well  known  in  the  police  and  quarter 
sessions  courts. 

The  drunkenness  of  Scotland,  like  its  poverty,  is 
something  hideous,  unrelieved  by  a  single  softening 
feature,  even  in  the  way  of  glamour.  There  is  no 
attempt  to  mask  it  or  excuse  it  or  commend  it.  The 
gin-shops  are  not  palaces  of  gas  and  light,  as  in  other 
lands,  to  allure  and  tempt.  They  are  foul  dens,  which, 
in  most  countries,  would  repel  and  disgust,  but  here 
they  are  sought.  The  Scotch  drunkard  evidently  drinks 
to  be  drunk,  shamelessly,  from  the  lowest  and  most 
brutish  of  purposes ;  and  it  is  this  which  makes  his 
case  so  hopeless,  and  so  warmly  enlists  one's  sympathies 
for  the  men  and  women  who  are  fighting  the  up-hill 
battle  for  the  redemption  of  their  land  from  its  greatest 
curse. 

The  cause  or  causes  of  the  wretched  and  debased 
condition  of  the  poorest  classes  of  Scotland  is  an  inter- 
esting and  very  difficult  social  problem,  covering  a  vast 
range  of  inquiry,  into  which  there  is  not  time  to  go  in  a 
letter,  or  perhaps  even  in  a  single  book.  I  aim  here 
only  to  present  the  facts,  not  to  account  for  them.  In- 
dependent of  its  interest  as  a  study  in  social  science, 
this  question  has  a  deeper  importance  for  us  Americans, 
as  there  is  a  strong  family  likeness  .between  our  two 
civilizations,  or  conditions  of  society.  Scotland,  as  we 
are,  is  a  land  of  churches  and  Bibles;  a  land  of  schools 
and  newspapers  and  common  education  ;  a  land  of  read- 
ing and  a  general  diffusion  of  average  and  commonplace 
information  (even  the  drunken  Scotchman  is  argumen- 
tative and  ludicrously  hortatory) ;  a  land  "  Liberal"  in 
its  politics,  and  the  Liberal  party  here  stands  to  the 
Tory  as  the  Republican  does  to  the  Democratic  in  our 
country,  the  party  of  advanced  ideas  and  progress; 
yet,  in  one  of  the  first  and  fundamental  trusts  of  the 
Church  and  of  the  State — the  care  of  the  poor — it  has 
made  a  complete  and  terrible  failure.  I  believe,  delib- 

20* 


234  SCOTLAND. 

erately,  that  it  is  far  better  to-day,  better  for  soul  and 
body,  to  be  an  Italian  peasant,  ignorant,  in  rags, 
trodden  under  in  politics,  image  worshipping,  and 
lying,  if  you  will,  but  happy,  full  of  the  human 
emotions,  with  grace  of  body  and  movement,  able  to 
sing  and  to  speak  kindly  and  lovingly,  with  the  power 
to  enjoy  the  beautiful  in  nature  and  art,  than  to  endure 
the  brutal  degradation  of  Scotch  poverty  as  seen  in  her 
cities, — a  degradation  which  breeds  coarse  and  debasing 
vices,  crushes  the  light  out  of  the  eyes  of  its  victim, 
self-respect  from  his  face,  and  hope  from  his  soul; 
which  not  only  leaves  him  nothing  to  enjoy,  but  takes 
away  even  the  power  of  enjoyment;  which  robs  even 
childhood  of  its  birthright  of  love  and  careless  pleasure. 

But  let  us  turn  to  something  more  pleasant. 

Rural  Scotland  presents  a  pleasant  contrast  to  the 
towns  and  cities.  If  there  is  suffering  there  at  least  it 
is  not  concentrated.  Drink  and  its  attendant  evils  there 
are.  Country  Scotland,  with  its  new  granite  farm- 
houses, looks  solid,  comfortable,  and  prosperous.  In- 
deed, large  portions  of  it  look  like  a  new  country,  so 
thoroughly  has  rebuilding  or  new  building  been  going 
on  within  the  present  generation.  The  old  thatched 
mud  cottage,  rudely  built  and  very  humble  in  appear- 
ance, is  giving  way  to  neat  new  small  buildings  of  solid 
masonry,  the  gray  granite  looking  not  merely  thrifty, 
but  quite  substantial.  In  many  places  you  see  the  old 
quarters  still  standing,  abandoned,  perhaps,  or  used  as 
temporary  shelter  for  cattle  or  animals,  and  the  cluster 
of  new  buildings,  trim  and  comfortable,  rising  from 
some  better  located  site  on  the  farm.  This  is  the  Scot- 
land that  is  going  forward. 

There  is  a  curious,  raw-boned,  theological  oast  to  the 
Scotch  popular  mind  which  crops  out  everywhere,  and 
the  disposition  to  obtrude  theological  technicalities  into 
common  life  is  very  marked,  and  sometimes  pro- 
duces odd  effects.  I  have  mentioned  how  the  dramatic 
martyrdom  of  Margaret  Wilson  is  blanketed  on  her 


SCOTTISH   NOTES.  235 

tomb  as  the  death  of  one  "  who  would  not  own  to  Eras- 
tianism."  On  the  gravestones  in  the  cemeteries,  instead 
of  a  salient  clause  or  effective  word  from  Scripture, 
are  copious  references  to  passages  simply  by  chapter  and 
verse,  thus :  Deut.,  c.  xxxv.,  v.,  vi.,  or  1st  Kings,  c. 
xxiii.,  v.,  xviii.  Often  a  stone  is  fairly  covered  over 
with  these  references,  in  part  to  verses  and  sometimes 
to  whole  chapters  at  once.  A  favorite  mortuary  in- 
scription is  a  very  positive  "  Covenant"  reference  im- 
plying indirectly  that  this  stone  evidences  a^completed 
contract,  and  sometimes  with  a  kind  of  baldness  that 
rather  jars  on  one's  sense  of  delicacy,  to  say  nothing 
of  reverence.  To  get  the  proper  effect  of  an  average 
Scotch  cemetery  one  must  go  through  it  Bible  in  hand, 
and  then  it  would  be  several  days7  good  work.  Again, 
in  a  country  Scotch  church,  when  the  minister  announces 
his  text,  reads  it,  and  alleges  that  it  comas  from  a  cvr- 
tain  chapter  and  verse,  the  whole  congregation  picks 
up  its  Bibles  and  refers  to  the  place  to  verify  their  pas- 
tor's word  or  satisfy  themselves  individually  on  some 
other  point. 

In  the  bookstores  and  stalls  there  is  a  distinctly  theo- 
logical coloring  to  the  volumes  and  prints  exposed  for 
sale.  In  Edinburgh,  for  instance,  they  do  not  seem  to 
have  gotten  over  the  Reformation  yet,  and  are  still 
fighting  it  out  with  polemic  treatises  and  newspaper 
articles.  I  have  noticed  also  one  or  two  popular  peri- 
odicals which  announce  a  weekly  "  prophetic"  article  as 
among  their  attractions.  In  Glasgow  I  passed  a  poor 
blind  beggar,  who  stood  by  the  wayside  begging  in  a 
rather  common  and  crowded  street,  and  to  attract  atten- 
tion was  laboriously  reading  word  by  word  by  touch 
out  of  a  Bible  printed  in  raised  letters.  He  was  tugging 
away  in  the  dust  and  dirt  at  a  chapter  from  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews  by  way  of  catching  the  popular  ear. 

There  is  one  institution  in  Glasgow  worthy  of  note, — 
the  Great  Western  Cooking  Depot.  This  famed  phil- 
anthropic institution  is  something  like  the  excellent 


236  SCOTLAND. 

Philadelphia  model  coffee-houses, — its  object  is  to  supply 
cheap  food,  well  cooked,  for  the  poorer  classes.  It  does 
supply  a  good  plain  breakfast,  substantial  enough  for  a 
hungry  workiugman,  at  a  cost  of  six  cents  of  our  money, 
and  a  dinner,  soup,  meat,  potatoes,  and  pudding,  for 
nine  cents.  Now,  Glasgow  is  a  city  which  imports  food 
from  us,  grain,  pork,  canned  meats,  live  cattle,  dead 
cattle,  dead  sheep,  tallow,  lard,  butter,  and  cheese,  and 
many  other  articles.  If  Glasgow,  importing  from  us, 
can  feed  \rorkmen  at  fifteen  cents  a  day,  what  ought  we 
not  to  do  ? 

Indeed,  in  every  way  the  prices  of  common  things 
seem  to  be  very  cheap  in  Glasgow,  and  from  a  super- 
ficial look  at  the  streets,  I  should  say  that  the  workman 
making  a  dollar  a  day  here  was  as  well  off  as  one 
making  say  one  dollar  and  forty  cents  a  day  in  Phila- 
delphia. I  cannot  speak  as  to  rents,  and  base  my 
estimates  only  on  food  and  clothing. 

The  Scotch  newspapers  resemble  the  American  nearer 
than  do  those  of  any  other  country.  In  the  Scotch 
towns  the  multiplicity  of  papers  and  of  readers  is  quite 
marked  in  contrast  with  England.  You  see  it  the  mo- 
ment you  cross  the  line.  Towns  like  Glasgow  and 
Edinburgh,  and  even  much  smaller  places,  all  have 
their  crop  of  dailies,  morning  and  afternoon. 

On  the  other  hand,  these  papers  tend  continually 
to  average  and  commonplace  level,  and  do  not  have 
the  weight  or  influence  of  the  English.  They  are 
"  snappy"  and  smart  rather  than  thoughtful  and 
strong,  of  the  terrier  rather  than  the  bull-dog  style. 

The  reason  for  this  similarity  of  the  Scotch  and 
American  paper  is  a  similarity  of  social  structure. 
There  is  in  Scotland  the  same  vast  mass  of  crude  half- 
education  diffused  through  all  the  community  as  with  us. 

I  am  not  speaking  in  condemnation  of  the  Scotch 
papers.  They  answer  a  very  useful  and  respectable 
purpose.  They  supply  the  kind  of  food  that  is  wanted 
for  a  large  lower-  and  middle-class  population  of  super- 


SCOTTISH  NOTES.  237 

ficial  intelligence  which  is  ntfmerous  in  Scotland.  In 
England  there  is  no  such  class,  the  lower  strata  of  so- 
ciety being  very  ignorant,  and  not  readers  of  anything. 
The  papers  of  England,  therefore,  appeal  solely  to  the 
upper  and  governing  class,  which  is  a  class  of  educa- 
tion, the  class  of  the  universities,  of  prestige  of  birth, 
of  wide  experience  of  men  and  travel.  They  are  writ- 
ten by  that  class  for  their  own  class.  The  Scotch 
papers  necessarily,  with  some  few  prominent  excep- 
tions, are  not. 

Scotland  shares  with  us  the  fortune  or  misfortune  of 
leading  in  the  drift  of  modern  civilization,  which  in  its 
present  stage  is  a  movement  towards  the  apotheosis  of  the 
average  and  commonplace.  Good  men  of  both  parties, 
the  Liberal  and  Conservative,  tell  me  that  there  is  a 
growing  tendency  the  same  way  in  politics, — i.e.,  to  the 
evolution  of  commonplace  men,  the  men  who  make  an 
impression  on  the  crude  and  half-educated  mind. 

The  Scotch  hotels  of  the  better  kind — the  large  and 
newly-built  houses — are  more  like  the  American  ones 
than  any  I  have  found  anywhere  in  Britain  or  on  the 
Continent.  They  have  our  spacious  public  provision 
for  comfort  nowhere  found  on  the  same  scale  in  Euro- 
pean hostelries,  generous  wash-  and  retiring-rooms, 
billiard-rooms,  writing-rooms,  reading-rooms,  public 
parlors.  While  they  thus  approach  the  virtues  of  our 
system,  they  also  share  its  vices, — defective  service, 
hurry,  and  a  mechanical  routine. 

It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  Scotland,  from  which 
we  took  so  much  one  or  two  centuries  ago,  is  now  taking 
back  from  us  the  new  institutions  which  we  have  devel- 
oped under  our  new  condition. 

I  close  with  a  Scottish  note  of  to-day,  which  illus- 
trates how  thoroughly  the  old  Scottish  spirit  of  integ- 
rity, the  spirit  which  willingly  sacrifices  itself  for  right, 
the  spirit  which  utterly  refuses  compromise  or  half-way 
settlement  with  wrong,  is  alive  and  burning  in  Scotland 
to-day.  It  is  one  of  the  principles  of  the  United  Pres- 


238  SCOTLAND. 

byterian  Church  not  to  "accept  money  for  sacred  uses 
from  unclean  hands.  They  decline  to  take  for  God, 
and  as  His  agent  or  minister,  money  that,  as  far  as 
they  can  see,  has  not  been  honestly  made. 

When  the  great  Glasgow  Bank  failure  took  place 
here  some  of  the  directors  were  members  of  the  United 
Presbyterian  congregations  of  the  city,  and  one  or  more 
of  them  were  large  givers, — almost  the  support,  I  am 
told,  of  their  particular  churches.  When,  by  the  judg- 
ment of  the  civil  courts,  these  directors  were  declared 
to  have  been  guilty  of  systematic  fraud  for  some  years 
back,  their  liberal  donations  were  all  returned  to  them, 
although  it  more  than  crippled  the  congregations  who 
did  it. 

This  fact  was  told  me  not  by  any  of  themselves,  but 
by  a  learned  clergyman  of  the  Established  Church  of 
Scotland,  who  bore  honorable  testimony  to  their  devo- 
tion to  principle,  and  their  own  profession. 
GLASGOW,  SCOTLAND. 


CHAPTER  XXYI. 

TOWARDS   THE   HEBRIDES.  ' 

THE  HIGHLANDS  AND  THE  WEST  COAST  OF  SCOTLAND — HOME 
.   OF  THE  CLAN  CAMERON — PRESBYTERIAN  SCOTLAND  OF  TO- 
DAY— A  SABBATH  EVE  IN  ARGYLESHIRE — A  KIRK  FAIR — 
THE  APPLES  OF  OBAN — AT  A  SCOTCH  KIRK — THE  TROOPER 
CLAVERHOUSE  IN  SILK  ATTIRE. 

I  STARTED  for  "  lona's  holy  fane77  from  Inverness, 
intending  to  give  a  summer's  month  to  the  bracing 
storms  and  sheeted  vapors  of  the  Hebrides,  seeking 
health  and  youth  in  the  shadowy  land  of  Ossianic  tra- 
dition, that  land  whose  song  and  legend  are  born  in 


TOWARDS   THE  HEBRIDES.  239 

one  with  Highland  blood,  and  which  the  descendant 
of  Celtic  ancestry  visits,  not  as  a  strange  country,  but 
as  one  going  back  into  the  mists  and  vague  eternity 
of  childhood.  It  is  wonderful  how  human  existence, 
through  these  nebulous  vapors  and  the  cloudy  sweep 
of  storm  and  wind  and  spray,  seems  to  almost  tone  and 
merge  itself  into  the  infinite  life  of  the  universe.  Clouds 
here  encircle  the  form  of  our  fathers,  their  voices  ride 
on  the  winds,  and  the  whole  spirit  and  imagery  of  Os- 
sian  is  as  real  as  the  rocks  and  the  waves. 

Inverness  is  a  central  part  of  departure  on  the  north- 
east coast  of  Scotland,  although  almost  in  the  centre 
of  the  northern  counties,  the  great  Moray  Firth  here 
breaking  into  the  shore  for  a  hundred  miles  or  more. 
It  is  a  kind  of  base  of  supplies  for  the  tourist  under- 
taking a  campaign  against  Ilebridian  fogs  and  tempests, 
— a  place  where  you  can  buy  stout  hunters'  shoes  and 
sailors'  headgear  and  waterproof  and  wondrous  Scotch 
tweeds  with  yawning  flaps  and  capotes. 

From  this  point  the  best  road  to  the  west  coast  lies 
through  the  Caledonian  canal  or  water-way,  cutting 
right  through  the  Highlands,  and  which  is  formed  by 
connecting  several  long,  narrow  lakes  by  short  canals. 
It  is  something  like  the  old  military  water-line  in  pro- 
vincial times  of  our  own  country,  formed  by  Lake 
George  and  Lake  Cham  plain.  This  route  is  known  as 
the  Rhine  of  Scotland,  and  is  always  thronged  with 
summer  travel.  It  is  wild  and  beautiful,  every  hill 
replete  with  legend  and  incident,  and  to  a  Scotch- 
American  every  town  and  name  recalling  home  associ- 
ations. 

Along  here  is  the  home  of  the  Camerons,  who  are 
pretty  thick  in  their  own  section, — a  thin-faced,  active, 
aggressive  race,  lords  and  liegemen,  with  a  common 
type  of  feature,  like  that  of  the  distinguished  Pennsyl- 
vanian  family.  I  also  found  the  Buchanan  family  face 
a  very  marked  type  through  Scotland.  Yon  see  on  this 
route  a  modest  stone  shaft,  known  as  the  Royal  Charlie. 


240  SCOTLAND. 

It  is  a  granite  pillar  which  marks  the  exact  spot  where, 
in  1745,  the  Clan  Cameron,  seven  hundred  strong, 
raised  the  standard  of  Prince  Charles  Edward, — an  act 
which  was  more  plucky  than  long-headed,  as  seen  in 
our  light,  but  which  might  have  been  a  fair  political 
risk  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago.  Here,  also,  they 
show  you  the  dramatic  wreck  of  the  house  of  Lochiel, 
— the  very  spot  on  which  the  last  of  the  name  know- 
ingly accepted  death  and  ruin  and  the  extinction  of  his 
family  name  to  save  his  honor  and  make  good  his 
pledged  word  by  a  desperate  and  hopeless  conflict. 

Of  a  weather-beaten,  kilted  Highlander,  who  stood 
near  me  at  the  time,  I  asked, — 

"  Have  you  many  Camerons  about  here  now  ?" 

"  Yes  ;  a  good  many." 

"  Do  they  go  much  into  politics  over  here  ?" 

"  Well,"  laughing,  "  we  think  a  good  deal  of  them 
in  this  part,  and  one  of  them  is  our  member  of  Parlia- 
ment just  now." 

"What's  his  name?" 

"  Donald." 

In  London  I  looked  over  the  Parliamentary  roll,  and 
sure  enough  the  member  for  Inverness  is  Donald  Cam- 
eron. This  Donald  Cameron  is  a  Conservative,  while 
the  general  political  drift  of  Scotland  is  strongly  Liberal. 
But  the  individual  Scotchman,  as  I  have  before  said, 
never  forgets  a  friend  or  a  foe,  and  the  Clan  Cameron 
of  1879  is  staunch  to  the  tradition  of  1745. 

You  end  the  Caledonia  Canal  route  at  Oban,  "  the 
Charing-Cross  of  the  Highlands,"  where  you  make 
ready  to  take  the  seas.  It  is  a  remote  Scottish  village, 
situated  beautifully  on  a  bay,  the  inland  extremity  of 
which  its  streets  encircle  very  prettily.  I  got  here  on 
Saturday  and  remained  over  Sunday,  engaging  passage 
in  a  coasting  vessel  for  Monday  to  lona.  I  was  anxious 
to  have  an  interior  view  of  modern  Scotch  village-life, 
and  very  glad  of  the  opportunity  to  see  it  here  in  its 


TOWARDS    THE  HEBRIDES.  241 

simplicity,  away  from  the  influences  of  any  "  great 
house." 

We  have  a  conventional  idea  in  many  parts  of  our 
country  that  in  Scotland  the  Sabbath  begins  on  Satur- 
day evening  at  sunset ;  that  the  aged  cotter  at  that  time 
gets  out  a  ponderous  family  Bible,  collects  a  cleanly-clad, 
serious  family  around  him  in  a  picturesque  tableau,  and 
begins  the  devotions,  which  continue,  with  slight 
changes,  for  twenty-four  hours.  I  had  long  since  given 
up  the  "  cleanly-clad"  touch  of  this  picture,  but  I  held 
on  to  the  main  design. 

I  dined  in  Oban  at  six  o'clock,  and  went  out  on  to 
the  streets  of  the  little  village  at  about  eight.  It  was 
wet  and  drizzling,  of  course,  but  the  children  of  He- 
bridian  mi.-ts  pay  not  the  least  attention  to  such  light  dis- 
comforts as  rain  and  mud  and  darkness.  Through  the 
leaden,  vapory  sheets  of  mist  and  the  obscured  clouds  I 
could  see  the  faint  lights  all  around  the  circular  line  of 
the  street  and  hear  coming  oitt  of  the  dense  fogs  the 
sounds  of  lively  music  at  different  points.  Pushing  out 
along  the  water  front,  all  the  shops  were  open,  the  win- 
dows lighted,  the  streets  full  of  young  men  and  women. 
Bagpipes  were  going  in  one  place,  and  farther  off  a  horn 
and  violin  band  were  plaving  "Over  the  River  to 
Charlie"  with  vim  and  spirit  enough  to  have  started  a 
French  barricade.  Some  young  couples  strolled  with 
locked  hands  rather  aimlessly  from  one  centre  of'.MUind 
to  another,  steering  expertly  between  the  squads  of  more 
or  less  drunken  men.  Generally  the  town  was  en  fite, 
although  after  the  heavy  northern  fashion.  Barring  the 
drunkenness,  with  the  fishermen  and  the  sailors  and  the 
shepherds  and  the  girls  and  the  music  and  divamy 
lights  on  the  sea,  you  might  have  fancied  yourself  in 
Italy  had  there  only  been  a  little  moonlight  and  a  few 
Madonnas. 

At  the  far  end  of  the  village  stood  a  rude,  frame 
school-house,  decked  with  limp,  wet  flags,  illuminated 
through  the  chinks  and  cracks  of  the  planks,  and  from 
L  g  21 


242  SCOTLAND 

which  the  music  of  fiddles  rang  merrily  Scotch  reels  and 
the  stirring  old  rebel  Jacobite  airs.  To  all  appearances 
things  had  gone  so  far  that  the  Covenanter  youths  of 
Scotland  were  having  a  Saturday-evening  dance  just  like 
the  simple  peasantry  of  Bretagne.  It  was  not  quite  so 
bad,  however.  Entering,  there  was  no  dancing  or  pro- 
vision for  it.  It  was  only  a  kirk-fair.  The  village 
kirk-house  was  in  need  of  repairs.  The  repairs  were 
being  made,  and  the  maids  and  matrons  of  the  kirk 
were  raising  or  helping  to  raise  'the  funds. 

The  scene  within  was  quite  animated,  and  had  the 
ordinary  features  of  a  country  church-fair  in  our  land. 
The  girls,  being  Scotch,  were  pretty  and  lithe  and  bright; 
the  articles  of  sale  as  utterly  impracticable  and  valueless 
as  if  they  had  been  exposed  on  aristocratic  tables  in  a 
city  charitable  bazaar.  There  were  some  matters  of 
detail  a  little  different  from  our  customs.  The  refresh- 
ment-table, for  instance,  had  a  generous  supply  of  wines 
and  certain  gurgling-necked  bottles,  which,  from  their 
familiar  national  character,  I  presumed  to  contain 
whiskey.  It  would  be  unfair,  however,  to  look  on  this 
incident  as  we  would  on  whiskey  sold  at  an  American 
fair  or  bazaar.  Its  use  is  the  general  habit  and  custom 
of  the  country,  and  there  was  no  unseemly  drinking  or 
noise  in  the  hall.  Had  you  gone  into  the  private  house 
of  the  clergyman  of  the  kirk  whiskey  would  probably 
have  been  offered  you  as  a  common  mark  of  hospitality, 
and  I  observe  that  Americans,  when  in  Scotland,  however 
they  may  moralize  at  home  on  the  evil  consequences, 
generally  take  the  whiskey.  It  is  an  incident  of  the 
Ossianic  mists,  and  has  been  so  from  the  times  of  the 
Vi  kings. 

The  prominent  and  popular  feature  of  the  kirk-fair, 
however,  was  the  lottery.  Everything  was  offered  in 
chances  and  shares,  and  raffling  was  evidently  the  most 
successful  "ways  and  means"  of  the  enterprise.  My 
companion  and  myself,  assailed  on  every  side,  earnestly 
remonstrated  with  these  enthusiastic  young  Covenanters, 


TOWARDS   THE  HEBRIDES.  243 

representing  that  we  bad  been  raised  as  Presbyterians, 
and  could  not  conscientiously  indulge  in  such  practices, 
even  they  bring  the  fair  temptation ;  further,  that  in 
the  far-off  provinces  from  which  we  came  all  lotteries 
were  criminal  oifences;  that  we  could  not  break  the 
laws  of  our  own  country,  even  in  a  foreign  land,  and 
especially  so  near  to  the  Sabbath-day.  But  the  young 
women,  as  usual,  were  not  amenable  to  reason.  There 
were  half  a  dozen  young  male  Americans  of  Puritan 
training  and  descent  at  this  village  fair  that  evening, 
and  I  fear  they  all  ate  of  the  apples  of  Oban. 

Next  morning,  however,  Scotland  was  herself  again, 
and  the  Sabbath  morning  broke  upon  an  Oban  as  stiff 
and  silent  and  decorous  as  if  there  never  had  been  a 
violin  or  a  kirk  lottery  or  a  Saturday  evening  fete 
within  its  precincts. 

I  went  to  the  Established  Kirk,  where  the  old  faith 
and  the  old  worship  hold  the  fort,  strong  and  safe.  It 
was  in  the  main  a  very  familiar  scene.  The  faces  wore 
just  the  same  as  you  would  soe  to-day  in  any  country 
Presbyterian  congregation  in  the  Cumberland  Vallov. 
You  could  pick  them  all  out,  elders  and  deacons,  and 
the  men  that  expected  in  time  to  be, — the  stern,  rigid 
faces  that  accepted  nothing  on  trust,  and  weighed  every 
sentence  of  their  preacher  in  the  balances.  The  sandy 
features  were  perhaps  in  the  predominance,  but  there 
was  a  strong  infusion  of  the  old  "black  Celt."  Even 
here  the  old  race  characteristics  assert  their  individuality 
and  refuse,  closed  up  together  for.  centuries,  to  blend  or 
mingle.  Everything  was  intensely  Scotch  in  look  and 
sound  and  custom.  A  McDougall  was  the  chief  man 
of  the  congregation,  the  head  of  the  clan  on  the  bay ; 
an  unregenerate  young  Campbell,  who  kicked  lustily, 
was  forcibly  baptized  during  the  services.  I  sat  in  the 
pew  of  Duncan  McGregor.  The  "  local  color"  was  all 
an  artist  could  pray  for. 

The  services  of  the  morning  did  not  differ  materially 
from  those  of  an  ordinary  Presbyterian  or  Congrega- 


244  SCOTLAND. 

tional  congregation  in  our  land,  save  in  the  quantity. 
I  give  the  order :  singing  of  a  hymn,  prayer,  reading 
from  the  Old  Testament,  singing  of  a  hymn,  reading 
from  the  New  Testament,  singing  of  a  paraphrase,  the 
sermon,  prayer,  singing  of  a  hymn,  baptism,  singing, 
benediction, — twelve  separate  exercises.  The  baptismal 
services,  which  was  an  interpolation  in  the  order  of  the 
day,  possibly  added  something. 

There  were  some  differences  in  the  service  and  scene 
between  the  old  Presbyterian  usages  of  our  land  worth 
noting.  The  church  building  was  in  cruciform  shape, 
and  the  saints  and  angels  looked  down  on  you  from 
rich  stained-glass  windows.  The  hymnal  was  a  modern 
collection  of  two  hundred  good  hymns,  many  of  them 
those  in  use  in  our  congregational  bodies.  The  Two 
Hundredth,  however,  was  the  ordinary  English 'version 
of  the  Te  J)eum  Laudamus,  closing  before  the  Kyrie 
Eleison  clauses.  The  Apostles7  Creed  and  the  Lord's 
Prayer  were  introduced  in  the  extempore  prayers,  and 
the  Creed  again  in  the  baptismal  service.  The  choir 
sat  in  the  apse. 

The  preacher  was  a  young  man,  with  red  hair  parted 
in  the  middle,  whiskers,  and  a  moustache.  He  wore 
the  black  gown  and  bands  and  a  purple  university 
hood.  He  preached  a  vigorous  and  able  sermon,  Old 
Testament  throughout  in  tone  and  imagery  and  train 
of  thought.  His  delivery  was  demonstrative  and  sten- 
torian, markedly  in  contrast  with  the  quieter  and  more 
scholarly  tone  of  the  JJnglish  pulpit.  It  was,  however, 
well  suited  to  the  place  and  the  audience,  to  whom,  I 
think,  his  effort — scholarly  and  thoughtful  in  its  way 
— was  very  acceptable.  He  fired  a  shot  at  the  pope, 
of  course. 

I  think  there  are  many  just  such  congregations  in 
Pennsylvania  to-day,  and  all  through  the  country,  even 
out  in  Alamosa,  where,  three  years  ago,  I  saw  the 
atoms  of  organization  arranging  themselves, — -just  such 
bodies  of  people  listening  to  just  the  same  doctrines 


TOWARDS   THE  HEBRIDES.  245 

enforced  by  just  the  same  argument.  The  preacher 
here  was,  as  his  hood  betokened,  a  university  man, 
and  his  sermon  gave  evidence  of  greater  scholarship 
and  force  of  trained  thought  than  the  average  Ameri- 
can pulpit  effort.  The  stained-glass  windows  and  the 
definite  ecclesiastical  architecture  showed  a  broader 
sense  of  power  and  a  larger  freedom  of  culture  than 
holds  in  many  of  our  villages,  but  they  have  come  in 
the  cities  and  will  spread  down. 

Time  was  when  the  saint  in  the  window  and  the 
cross  of  nave  and  transept  was  a  political  emblem, 
much  more  than  anything  else,  and  the  sturdy  Presby- 
terians of  Scotland  were  perfectly  right  and  logical  in 
tearing  them  down.  We  are  reaping  the  fruits  in  our 
civil  freedom  and  religious  liberty  now.  But  the  time 
is  past  when  such  things  are  to  be  feared,  and  there  is 
no  reason  now  why  all  the  beauties  of  art  and  estab- 
lished aesthetic  principles  should  not  adorn  the  temples 
of  any  faith  in  our  land  or  England. 

These  changes  in  the  aesthetic  development  of  the 
form  and  plan  of  worship  have  not  weakened  the  vigor 
or  power  of  the  faith.  The  old  soul  was  there  in  the 
kirk  of  Oban  just  as  resolute  and  true,  and  a  good  deal 
broader,  and,  consequently,  stronger  than  a  hundred 
years  ago. 

It  was  very  interesting  to  me  to  trace  these  simili- 
tudes or  divergencies  between  the  Presbyterianism  of 
the  old  land  and  of  our  own.  They  mark  and  record 
the  mental  and  historical  development  of  the  two 
peoples.  There  are  Presbyterian  corners  of  our  land 
that  are  to-day  perhaps  more  Scotch  than  Scotland. 
We  brought  over  the  Scotland  of  1700,  and  hold  it 
there  unchanged  still,  while  the  General  Kirk  of  Scot- 
land, changing  with  history  and  life  of  a  people,  has 
gone  on  to  something  different.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  are  spots  in  Scotland  which  have  never  changed 
for  a  hundred  years,  and  will  not  for  a  hundred  years 
to  come.  The  general  religious  life  of  both  'ountries 

21* 


246  SCOTLAND. 

is,  however,  I  think,  under  somewhat  different  condi- 
tions, moving  forward  much  alike,  and  with  very  equal 
step.  The  Presbyterian  ism  of  our  country  and  of 
Scotland  to-day  is  much  alike,  although  it  is  very 
different  from  what  it  was  either  here  or  there  a  gen- 
eration ago.  But  the  race  holds  together  in  its  march. 
I  may  mention  here  a  little  incident  of  interest  in 
this  connection  which  I  came  across  during  the  summer 
at  another  point  in  Scotland.  In  the  drawing-room  of 
the  Earl  of  Strath  more  at  Glamis  Castle  there  hangs 
with  the  family  portraits  a  full-length  painting  of  the 
famous  dragoon  Claverhouse,  whose  name  was  once 
such  a  terror  to  the  Covenanters,  and  whose  memory 
yet  is  recalled  only  with  unuttered  imprecations  by 
their  descendants.  Much  to  my  surprise,  thinking  of 
him  only  from  the  conventional  conception  of  Cove- 
nanter tradition,  I  found  the  portrait  of  an  entirely 
different  manner  of  man.  He  was  sumptuously  dressed 
in  a  wealth  of  rich  colored  silk  that  in  our  time  would 
be  effeminate,  and  his  forui  and  carriage  bore  the  un- 
mistakable impress  of  a  man  accustomed  to  good  so- 
ciety and  trained  to  its  amenities.  His  face  was  refined, 
pleasing,  and  almost  gentle, — very  much  the  same  face 
as  those  which  gather  at  the  castle  to-day,  with  ladies 
and  flowers  and  music,  for  luncheon  and  lawn-tennis. 
In  this  mild,  amiable,  gentlemanly  officer  it  was  impos- 
sible to  see  the  rough  and  merciless  mosstrooper  of 
Scottish  tradition.  There  is  nothing  at  all  vindictive 
or  cruel  in  the  face,  and  little  that  is  indicative  of  force. 
I  can  only  infer  that  Claverhouse  was  not  the  motive- 
power  of  his  own  action.  He  was  probably  an  amiable 
kind  of  man,  receptive  to  the  impressions  of  a  stronger 
will,  the  ready  tool  of  a  firmer  hand  and  more  cunning 
head, — one  of  those  men  who  are  good  for  instruments 
and  to  work  under  and  for  others.  He  had  even,  'pos- 
sibly, a  strong  religious  tendency,  which  exercised  itself 
in  following  ignorantly  and  unthinkingly  the  instruc- 
tions of  any  ecclesiastical  authority  to  which  he  professed 


JON  A.  247 

fealty.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  he  had  ecclesiastical 
instruction  for  his  savage  forays  on  the  Scotch  con- 
venticles, but  he  was  probably  taught  by  his  Church,  after 
the  unchristian  spirit  of  those  times,  that  it  was  doing 
God  service  to  crush  out  heresy  by  violence,  and  lie  was 
honest  enough  to  practise  what  others  only  preached. 

Let  us  be  thankful  for  our  gentler  and  better  times, 
which  enable  us  to  think  of  this  man  without  anger, 
and  to  judge  him  dispassionately. 

At  this  point  of  Oban  I  left  the  mainland  for  lona, 
which,  with  its  traditions,  as  the  early  seat  of  our 
Christianity,  the  northern  ark,  when  all  the  world  was 
in  chaos  under  the  flood  which  swept  away  the  Roman 
Empire  and  oivili/ation,  and  Staifa,  with  its  grand 
"  temple  not  made  with  human  hands,"  and  Ulva's 
isle,  I  must  leave  for  another  paper. 

OBAN,  SCOTLAND. 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 


ION  A. 

THE  AURORAL  LIGHT  OF  NORTHERN  CHRISTIANITY — A  STORM 
OFF  THE  WEST  COAST  OK  SCOTLAND— A  KUDK  WESTMINSTER 
—THE  FUNERAL  CORTEGE  OF  FORGOTTEN. LINES  OF  KINGS — 
MACBETH'S  GRAVE — A  DOVE  OF  THE  CHURCH — THE  STORY 
OF  ST.  COLUMHA— THE  IRISH  SAINTS  MILITANT  OF  OLD — IN 
GAELIC  LAND — THE  HOME  OF  THE  MACLEANS — IONA  OF  TO- 
DAY— THE  HOLY  PLACE  OF  DRUID,  PAGAN,  CHRISTIAN — 
SAILING  THE  SUMMER  SEAS  OF  SCOTTISH  ROMANCE— FIN- 
GAL'S  CAVE,  THE  CATHEDRAL  OF  THE  SEAS — LORD  ULLIN'S 
DAUGHTER — THE  HIGHLANDERS  OF  THE  SEA. 

"  The  Hebrid  Isles 
Placed  far  amid  the  melancholy  main." 

MONDAY  morning  broke  with  a  fresh,  whistling  gale 
sweeping  along  the  west  coast  of  Scotland,  but  as  that 
is  rather  the  rule  and  calm  weather  the  exception  on 


248  SCOTLAND. 

the  Hebridean  seas,  our  coaster  boldly  put  off  from  the 
black,  slippery  dock  at  Oban,  and  headed  for  the  lower- 
ing and  leaden  skies.  After  a  rough  passage,  with  no 
worse  disaster  than  the  relentless  ravages  of  the  mal  de 
mer,  which  took  down  a  goodly  proportion  of  the  pas- 
senger-list, the  staunch  little  craft  anchored  off  a  reef 
some  distance  out  from  the  inhospitable  shores  of  the 
Holy  Island,  and  we  visitors  were  taken  aground  in 
Borne  little  fisherman's  boats.  The  coaster,  which,  in 
summer-time,  makes  daily  trips  to  lona,  lands  its  pas- 
sengers in  this  wise,  and  after  driving  them  through 
the  main  ruins  of  the  island,  much  as  you  might  con- 
duct a  herd  of  cattle,  sails  away  again,  all  in  an  hour. 
This  seems  to  have  been  the  unsatisfactory  routine  from 
the  time  of  Wordsworth,  if  I  read  aright  the  complaint 
of  some  of  his  verses.  Taking  heed  from  the  poet's 
disappointment,  rny  brother  and  myself  concluded  to 
lay  over  the  night  in  a  humble  inn  which  is  found  on 
the  island,  and,  after  a  day  spent  at  leisure  among  the 
Druidic  and  Christian  remains/ to  take  a  fisherman's 
boat  and  meet  the  coasting  vessel  at  some  farther  point 
out  on  its  next  day's  trip,  when  it  was  to  come  down 
from  the  north  instead  of  up  from  the  south. 

This  plan,  which  is  the  only  one  by  which  one  can 
see  the  place  intelligently,  and  which  I  would  adopt 
again  were  I  visiting  lona  another  time,  in  this  instance 
cost  us  four  days'  solitary  imprisonment  on  the  little 
island.  The  storm  grew  only  more  furious  as  night 
came  on,  and  the  next  day  seemed  only  to  increase  in 
rage.  Until  Thursday  not  a  vessel  ever  came  in  sight, 
or  even  put  out  from  Scotland,  as  we  afterwards  learned, 
and  not  a  fisherman  dare  leave  the  shore.  All  the  time 
the  entire  seas  around  were  lashed  with  foamf  ceaselessly 
breaking  and  charging  on  the  giant  rocks  and  deadly 
reefs  with  demoniac  fury.  Sometimes  the  angry  waters 
seemed  forced  through  clefts  or  caverns  in  the  rocks, 
and  would  shoot  up  into  the  air  columns  of  foam  and 
spray  apparently  several  hundreds  of  feet  high.  It 


IONA.  249 

was  a  supremely  magnificent  spectacle,  and  it  moved 
all  day  long  and  all  night  to  the  rhythmic  thunders  of 
the  mighty  surges  rumbling  awful  basses  away  below 
the  range  of  the  human  scale.  During  the  second  day 
the  torn  and  mutilated  body  of  a  little  boy  was  washed 
ashore,  utterly  unrecognizable  and  unknown.  From 
the  clothing  and  other  indications  the  fishermen  be- 
lieved it  to  be  some  shepherd  lad  from  one  of  the 
neighboring  islands,  snatched  from  the  earth  by  the 
angry  sea  in  one  of  its  frenzied  inroads. 

The  venerable  religious  and  race  associations  which 
centre  in  lona  are  familiar  to  the  educated  world.  It 
was,  stretching  back  into  remote  ages  whose  antiquity 
cannot  now  be  told,  holy  ground,— a  kind  of  Mecca,  or 
Jerusalem,  or  Rome,  for  the  savage  clans  of  our  fore- 
fathers who  rode  the  northern  seas.  Scandinavian,  Pict, 
Scot,  Irish,  Celt,  Gael,  revered  its  soil,  worshipped  at 
its  altars,  and  buried  their  great  in  its  consecrated  earth. 
Dr.  Johnson  calls  it  "this  awful  ground."  During  the 
sixth  century,  when  the  world  was  breaking  up  in  the 
convulsive  dissolution  of  the  Roman  Empire,  this  little 
isle  held  the  light  of  Christianity  and  civilization  for 
the  new  race  that  was  coming  on  to  the  scene.  It  was, 
undoubtedly,  a  rude  faith  and  a  very  meagre  civiliza- 
tion, but  it  held  the  spark,  such  as  it  was,  and  kept  the 
flame  alive. 

Perhaps  the  most  touching,  certainly  the  most  im- 
pressive, of  all  the  remains  of  lona  are  its  rude,  kingly 
graves.  In  the  universal  wreck  and  plunder  which 
marked  the  savage  warfare  of  our  Norse  ancestors,  all 
peoples  seem  to  have  respected  "  the  Blessed  Isle,"  as 
it  was  reverentially  called,  and  the  bones  of  the  great 
and  the  good  were  carried  there  from  afar,  that  they 
might  be  safe  from  spoliation,  and  await  in  peace  and 
under  holy  guard  the  morning  of  the  resurrection. 

Tradition  says  that  for  centuries  the  kings  of  France, 
and  Ireland,  and  Scotland,  and  Norway,  and  of  far 
isles  were  buried  here.  Here,  also,  were  brought  the 


250  SCOTLAND. 

bishops  and  lordly  abbots  of  legendary  memory.  The 
cemetery  of  these  royal  tombs  is  shown,  and  the  traces 
of  many  graves  are  clearly  visible.  They  lie  in  long 
rows,  many  of  them  under  monumental  slabs  of  an 
enduring  slate,  rudely  etched  with  crosses,  croziers,  and 
shields  and  swords  and  Runic  symbols.  These  slate 
•tombstones  have  a  hard,  polished  surface,  and  seem 
almost  imperishable,  and  much  of  the  etching  is  bold 
and  spirited.  A  great  Runic  cross  stretches  its  pro- 
tecting arms  over  this  sacred  enclosure.  It  is  evident 
that  there  has  been  some  restoration  in  the  arrangement 
of  the  graves  of  this  yard,  and  some  of  the  royal  tablets 
are  certainly  over  the  wrong  bodies ;  but  the  general 
fact  of  the  long  sanctity  of  the  spot  and  its  kingly 
occupancy  is  undoubted  and  established.  It  is  the 
rude  Westminster  of  the  unrecorded  history  of  our  race. 
This  was  the  burying-place,  also,  of  the  Lords  of 
the  Isles,  sung  by  Sir  Walter  Scott.  Here,  too,  Mac- 
beth is  buried  and  his  murdered  sovereign. 

Rosse. — "  Where  is  Duncan's  body  ?" 
Macduff. — "  Carried  to  Colmekill'; 

The  sacred  storehouse  of  his  predecessors, 

And  guardian  of  their  bones." 

I  should  have  stated  before  that  the  ancient  name 
of  lona — the  name  of  mediaeval  legend  and  history — 
is  I-Columb-Kill,  the  island  of  St.  Columba  of  the 
Church. 

By  the  aid  of  a  rude  monkish  chart  or  map  pre- 
served on  the  island,  and  giving  the  contour  of  the 
shore  in  its  historic  days,  my  brother  and  myself  traced 
the  whole  outline  of  the  land,  and  found  the  tiny  bay 
or  cove  which  tradition  asserts  to  have  been  the  land- 
ing-place of  these  sad  processions.  It  is  a  narrow, 
rock-walled  entrance  of  several  hundred  feet,  termi- 
nating in  a  few  yards  of  smooth,  sandy  shore  covered 
with  white  and  richly-colored  pebbles  worn  almost 
purely  round  by  the  endless  wash  of  the  waves.  I 


ION  A.  251 

hear  yet  the  grating  rattle  of  these  sounding  stones 
ceaselessly  rolling  alone  for  centuries.  In  good  weather 
small  row-boats  might  land  here  with  comparative 
safety  and  in  decent  quiet.  Once  on  land,  a  level  and 
sheltered  stretch  of  ground  affords  an  appropriate  spot 
for  a  temporary  halt  and  any  preliminary  services. 
This  favored  landing  is,  however,  on  the  opposite  shore 
of  the  island  from  the  cemetery  and  ecclesiastical  build- 
ings,— the  cathedral,  convent,  and  consecrated  ground, 
— and  in  a  diagonal  direction.  They  bore,  therefore, 
the  bodies  of  their  kings  in  stately  procession  a  distance 
of  some  two  miles  or  more,  and  over  the  mountain 
range,  which  is  crossed  by  a  moderate  pass,  through 
which  an  imperfect  road  now  winds. 

It  was  from  this  far  shore  of  the  island  that  came 
the  precious  green  stones,  which,  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
properly  consecrated  and  blessed,  circulated  all  over 
Europe  as  holy  amulets. 

Our  enforced  confinement  on  the  island,  although 
involuntary,  was  a  pleasant  and  gainful  episode.  Four 
days  of  the  storms  of  the  Scottish  seas  are  a  substantial 
investment  in  the  way  of  health,  and  in  no  other  way 
could  we  have  so  entered  into  the  life  and  spirit  of  the 
place.  Shut  out  from  the  world,  its  solemn  traditions 
came  slowly  back  out  of  the  ages,  and  were  part  of  the 
hour  and  moment. 

With  this  time  at  our  disposal  we  traced  out  the 
whole  plan  of  the  primitive  ecclesiastical  establishment 
as  it  stood  in  the  eleventh  century,  and  probably  in.  the 
sixth;  for  the  later,  or  restoration,  buildings  seem  to 
have  been  faithfully  erected  on  the  site  of  the  ancient 
sanctuaries  built  by  St.  Columba  and  his  disciples,  and 
destroyed  by  the  pagan  Danes,  A.D.  807,  when  the 
whole  island  was  pillaged,  the  inhabitants  slain,  the 
priests  sacrificed,  and  every  stone  razed  to  the  ground. 

Of  St.  Columba,  whose  name  is  the  savor  of  this 
spot,  and  whose  work  gave  it  a  place  in  history,  it  is 
difficult  to  speak  truthfully  at  this  time  without  con- 


252  SCOTLAND. 

veying  an  erroneous  and  damaging  impression,  the 
lights  of  his  age  and  ours  are  so  different.  He  comes 
down,  of  course,  in  the  tradition  of  the  Church,  en- 
dowed with  all  the  Christian  graces;  a  priest  burning 
with  love ;  the  "Dove  of  the  Church,"  as  his  legendary 
name  tells;  a  worker  of  miracles;  a  teacher  of  civili- 
zation; and  the  legend  always  closes  with  the  hal- 
lowing shades  of  a  venerated  death-bed,  when,  full  of 
years  and  honor,  and  in  the  odor  of  sanctity,  the  saint 
went  up  in.  peace  and  joy  to  meet  his  God.  These  are 
the  shades,  and  this  the  coloring  of  the  picture  drawn 
in  the  convent  and  mellowed  by  time  and  the  softening 
distance  of  ages. 

Viewed  nearer,  the  lines  are  much  harsher  and  less 
romantic.  We  now  know  St.  Columba  to  have  been  a 
saint  militant  of  the  most  aggressive  and  pugnacious 
kind,  for  whom  even  Ireland  was  too  gentle  and  peace- 
ful a  land.  We  know  that  his  record  there  was  one  of 
strife  and  trouble,  and  that  he  finally  left  it  by  the 
advice  of  his  ecclesiastical  superior.  Even  when  he 
had  settled  lona,  reared  his  triumphant  crosses  on  its  soil, 
erected  his  convent  and  set  his  matin  and  vesper  bells 
a-ringing  over  its  waves,  his  life  then  was  probably 
nearer  that  of  our  Indian  frontier  than  of  a  modern 
missionary.  He  had  foes  within  and  without;  wars 
with  the  pagan  clans  of  the  North  seas  and  with  preda- 
tory monks  of  his  own  faith,  eager  as  he  for  conquest 
and  adventure.  On  one  occasion  some  Irish  saints  of 
a  rival  order,  having  landed,  gained  a  footing  in  lona, 
and  built  their  convent  and  chapel  on  the  far  shore  of 
the  island ;  the  dove-like  Columba,  after  some  inef- 
fective controversies,  moved  in  force,  with  a  detach- 
ment of  his  saints,  against  the  invading  brethren,  drove 
them  out,  and  razed  to  the  ground  the  offending  sanc- 
tuary, "  as  was  the  law  in  such  cases,"  gravely  annotates 
the  faithful  chronicler.  Every  trace  of  this  fated 
mission  is  now  gone,  but  from  the  old.  chart  one  can 
exactly  locate  its  site,  which  is,  in  all  respects  save  a 


IONA.  253 

commanding  sweep  for  its  tower  and  bells  over  the 
seas,  better  than  that  of  St.  Columba's.  Again,  the 
simple  biographer  and  disciple :  "  Now  a  question  arose 
between  St.  Columba  and  St.  Comgar  concerning  a 
church  near  Coleraine,"  and  it,  too,  was  finally  decided 
by  a  pitched  battle  between  the  fraternities  of  these 
pious  leaders. 

I  found  on  this  lonely  island  an  old  monkish  chroni- 
cle, written  in  rude,  mediaeval  Latin,  of  the  life  and 
adventures  of  St.  Columba,  extremely  interesting  and 
picturesque  when  read  on  the  spot.  Of  course,  one 
now  can  hardly  believe  in  the  accuracy  or  literal  truth 
of  much  of  it,  but,  like  Pompeiian  frescoes  or  Middle- 
Age  tapestries,  the  whole  gave  a  wonderfully  vivid  and 
life-like  picture  of  the  daily  existence  of  the  time, — the 
habits  of  the  saints,  the  atmosphere  of  simple  credulity 
and  childish  ignorance  in  which  they  habitually  moved 
and  thought.  Everything  was  rude  and  humble  and 
primitive,  their  surroundings  and  accommodations  of 
the  very  simplest  and  most  limited  kind. 

St.  Columba  worked  miracles  daily  and  endlessly 
and  on  the  very  slightest  provocation,  but  they  were 
all  of  the  rudest  and  most  humble  incident, — exorcising 
the  devil  out  of  a  milk-pail  carried  by  one  of  the 
brothers,  holding  on  a  wooden  wheel  on  a  cart  without 
a  linch-pin,  or  protecting  the  working  brethren  from 
the  cold  and  snows.  The  little  road  from  the  brothers' 
house  and  stables  to  the  church — hardly  five  hundred 
yards  long,  and  now  marked  at  its  angles  with  a  fine 
Runic  cross,  the  reverent  offering  of  later  centuries — 
was  a  perfect  theatre  of  spiritual  manifestations,  the 
angels  dividing  daily  its  poor  and  meagre  accommo- 
dations with  the  brethren.  Jacob's  glittering  ladder 
was  hardly  so  grand  a  roadway.  It  was  a  condition 
of  life  and  thought  we  can  hardly  understand,  and 
perhaps  cannot  do  justice  to  at  all.  The  cold,  rude 
rocks  of  this  barren  islet,  with  their  ruder  people,  were 
a  theatre  of  the  warmest  fervency  of  faith  and  devo- 


254  SCOTLAND. 

tion.  This  place  was,  for  these  simple,  half-barbarian 
Christians,  the  very  gates  of  heaven,  and  they  lived 
from  year  to  year  in  a  kind  of  sluggish,  arctic  ecstasis. 

But  this  we  do  know  of  the  heroic  saint  whose  force 
and  fervency  of  character  has  thrown  his  name  out 
of  dark  ages  far  into  the  light  and  brilliancy  of  future 
ones:  he  was  a  man  of  his  time  and  a  historic  leader. 
However  rude  some  things  may  sound  to  us  now,  he 
had  all  the  education  and  advantages  of  his  period, — 
the  education  of  the  schools,  of  the  monastery,  of  travel 
and,  I  think,  of  arms.  He  was  also  a  man  of  good 
birth,  and  had  the  power  which  always  comes  from 
high  social  relations  and  experience.  He  was  qualified 
for  his  great  work  and  the  time  in  which  he  did  it. 
His  labors  were  given,  not  to  his  own  advantage,  but 
for  his  fellows,  and  his  name  still  lives. 

In  the  very  darkest  of  the  Dark  Ages,  about  A.D.  563, 
Columba,  an  Irish  monk  of  noble  blood,  left  Ireland, 
and,  sailing  northward,  sought  an  unknown  island  and 
founded  there  a  monastic  home.  He  brought  with 
him,  tradition  says,  twelve  disciples,  brother-monks, 
and  his  avowed  mission  was  the  conversion  to  Chris- 
tianity of  the  Northern  pagan  kings  and  the  spread 
of  civilization  among  their  tribes.  He  did  convert  first 
Connall,  king  of  the  Dalriads,  a  name  even  that  is  lost 
now.  Successively  he  brought  under  the  standard  of 
the  cross  the  heathen  Picts  and  the  Scots,  and  the 
savage  clans  of  the  Orkneys  and  even  of  far-off  Ice- 
land. From  this  little  seat  of  learning  and  faith  the 
auroral  lights  of  Northern  Christianity  were  shed  in 
this  early  century  even  thus  far  out  toward  our  own 
unknown  continent. 

The  force  of  faith  and  love  which  St.  Columba  had 
centred  in  this  aggressive  mission  projected  itself  far 
out  for  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  years,  and  its  mem- 
ory will  never  die  now  so  long  as  Christianity  en- 
dures. Columba  himself  died  before  the  century  was  out. 
He  had  entered,  by  human  acclamation,  the  goodly 


IONA  255 

fellowship  of  the  saints  long  before  death  came,  and 
the  legend  of  his  departure,  as  told  in  the  simple  Latin 
of  the  old  chronicle,  is  a  very  beautiful  and  touching 
story.  For  three  years  he  had  prayed  God  without 
ceasing  for  release,  and  at  last,  advised  in  the  night- 
time that  his  prayer  was  granted,  he  repaired  at  once, 
unattended,  through  the  inclement  blasts  and  snow  of 
a  boreal  winter,  to  the  simple  stone  altar  which  had 
been  his  life-work  and  whose  future  was  to  be  so  great, 
and  there,  in  the  act  of  prayer,  ascended  to  heaven. 
His  body  was  immediately  enshrined  in  this  holy 
place;  the  saint  was  beneath  the  altar. 

For  two  hundred  years  the  fires  of  faith  burned 
brightly  in  lona,  illuminating  the  northern  horizon. 
During  the  chaos  of  Europe  this  little  island  was  the 
lamp  of  the  world.  It  kept  alive  in  its  slender  flame 
learning  and  civilization  ami  Christianity.  At  last,  but 
not  until  a  new  civilization  was  emerging  in  Europe 
from  the  chaos  of  the  old,  its  fhime,  too,  was  extin- 
guished in  a  dramatic  tragedy.  After  hopeless  strug- 
gles, from  time  to  time,  with  the  Scandinavian  pagans, 
long  years  of  fluctuating  vicissitudes,  of  pillages,  of 
escape,  of  plundering*,  of  martyrdoms,  in  807  the 
Danes  swept  the  island  with  ferocious  vengeance, 
destroyed  every  vestige  of  building,  murdered  or 
carried  off  the  defenceless  population,  and  offered  up 
the  priests  of  Christianity  on  the  triumphant  altars  of 
Odin.  Then  there  was  night  in  lona. 

Generations  after,  when  quieter  times  came,  lona 
was  repeopled  by  Christian  converts,  her  fanes  rebuilt, 
her  altars  re-established.  It  was  then  she  became 
famous  as  the  remembered  cradle  of  British  Chris- 
tianity. It  was  then  that  her  very  soil  came  to  bear 
the  flavor  of  sanctity,  and  that  the  kings  of  warring 
tribes  respected  it  as  a  common  sepulchre.  It  is  the 
ruins  of  these  times  that  we  now  see,  some  of  them  as 
late,  probably,  as  the  thirteenth  century, — that  wonder- 
ful epoch  of  cathedral -building  all  over  Europe.  It  is 


256  SCOTLAND. 

from  this  period  that  come  the  impressive  monolithic 
crosses,  the  slate  and  granite  tombs  with  kingly  helmets 
and  lordly  mitres, — the  emblems  of  princely  abbots  at  a 
time  in  British  history  when  the  abbot  was  a  far  more 
important  and  powerful  personage  than  is  the  bishop 
of  this  age. 

The  lona  of  to-day  is  a  straggling  fisherman's 
hamlet  of  a  dozen  or  so  houses,  with  a  few  more 
huts  for  shepherds  at  solitary  points  over  the  island. 
Everything  is  rude,  and,  like  the  island,  meagre,  poor, 
and  scanty.  The  houses  are  low,  but  built  of  tremen- 
dous thickness  of  walls,  to  stand  the  constant  sweep  of 
the  wind  and  the  periodic  break  of  tempests.  These 
poor,  rude  dwellings  are  covered  with  thatch,  and  the 
thatch  secured  by  a  strong  network  of  rope  extending 
over  the  entire  roof,  and  held  to  its  place  by  large, 
heavy  bowlders  fastened  to  the  ends. 

Inside  the  houses  everything  is  simple  and  primi- 
tive :  stone  flags  for  floors,  and  sometimes  only  mud  ; 
a  peg  or  two  for  the  nets  and  fishing-tackle,  a  plain 
stool,  some  humble  kitchen  utensils,  are  generally  all 
the  furniture.  The  cleaning  up  seems  to  be  done  by 
the  ducks  and  pigs,  which  have  the  freedom  of  the 
house. 

So  small  and  confined  is  the  settlement,  and  the  life 
of  the  island  so  much  in  common,  that  the  animals 
seem  to  have  lost  their  fear  of  mankind,  and  move 
around  like  citizens  conscious  of  their  "  equal  rights." 
Even  the  dogs  which  ran  out  to  meet  us  in  the  village 
and  over  the  bare,  heathered  hills  never  plunged  out 
angrily,  but  came  forward  for  the  first  time  with  wag- 
ging tails,  friendly  bark,  and  every  demonstration  of 
pleasure,  glad  to  greet  a  new  form. 

There  is  no  coal  on  the  island  and  no  wood,  the  bar- 
ren hills  growing  only  heather,  gorse,  and  nettles.  This 
alone  adds  fearfully  to  the  poverty  of  a  place  that  is 
cold  and  wet  nearly  all  the  year  round.  I  make  this 
note  September  2d,  and  we  are  having  fire  every  day, 


IONA.  257 

and  all  day,  in  our  rooms,  and  outside  the  poor  farmers 
complain  of  the  lateness  of  the  season.  Buttercups,  too, 
are  blooming  now — September — instead  of  May,  as 
with  us. 

This  island,  three  miles  long  by  one  to  two  wide, 
has  an  area  of  two  thousand  acres,  only  six  hundred 
of  which  are  capable  of  cultivation.  It  yields  to  its 
owner,  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  a  rental  of  four  hundred 
pounds, — just  a  dollar  an  acre  for  all  the  land,  good 
and  bad.  At  least  one-half  of  it  is  rock,  and  none 
of  it  would  be  tilled  at  all  by  the  average  American 
farmer,  who  would  not  consider  life  worth  living  in 
its  wet  sands. 

When  we  remember  that  we  can  buy  in  Kansas  or 
Colorado  the  best  wheat-lands  in  the  world  at  less  per 
acre  than  the  rental  for  one  year  of  a  bleak  Scotch  sand 
shore,  inaccessible  and  inclement,  we  can  judge  how  much 
better  is  the  lot  of  the  poor  man  with  us  than  here. 

Nevertheless,  the  place  has  charms  of  its  own  for 
men  of  this  race.  The  family  we  are  staying  with 
came  here  five  years  ago  as  a  matter  of  choice,  and  I 
made  the  acquaintance  of  a  Scotch  stranger  on  the  land- 
ing who  afterwards  told  me  he  came  here  many  sum- 
mers from  the  love  of  the  place. 

The  language  of  the  island  is  Gaelic,  and  the  people 
speak  it  in  a  thick,  guttural  tone,  and -with  a  shy,  half- 
alarmed  manner  that  prevents  your  even  getting  at  all 
the  real  sounds.  Seeing  no  one  at  all  save  some  tour- 
ists for  a  few  weeks  in  the  year,  the  children  run 
around  like  young  savages,  barelegged  and  bare- 
footed, and  with  thick,  black  horse-hair  falling  from 
their  heads  and  over  their  faces,  like  our  Indians. 
There  is  no  beauty  among  them,  either  of  face  or  form. 
Life  is  too  hard.  Little  children  with  hard,  unlovely 
faces  follow  you  on  a  trot  over  sharp  stones  or  through 
coarse  wet  grass,  dirty,  unkempt,  and  almost  unclad, 
to  sell  their  meagre  treasures  of  shells  or  pebbles. 

The  little  girls  we  saw  wore  commonly  a  short  petti- 
r  22* 


258  SCOTLAND. 

coat,  not  reaching  to  their  knees,  and  that  general  I/  partly 
torn  away  by  exercise  and  long  use.  The  color  of  this 
garment  was  indiscernible ;  the  color  of  their  skin  was  a 
dark,  ruddy  red,  almost  that  of  our  savage.  Although 
the  ground  of  this  island  is  hard  and  stony,  the  winds 
sharp  and  cutting,  and  the  soil  productive  of  generous 
crops  of  thistles,  nettles,  and  thorny  plants,  its  inhab- 
itants go  about  with  bare  feet  and  legs  with  impunity, 
less  protected  even  than  the  sheep  or  pigs. 

There  is  no  corn-mill  in  lona,  and  the  scanty  crop 
of  grain  is  carried  over  to  an  adjoining  island  to  be 
ground.  When  this  support  fails  by  reason  of  con- 
tinued storms  or  absence  of  the  men  fishing,  resort  is 
had  to  the  "quern,"  or  hand-mill,  the  same  as  men- 
tioned in  the  Bible.  There  are  two  of  these  primitive 
mills  on  the  island. 

lona  is  the  home  of  the  Macleans,  a  stalwart  tribe 
well  known  in  Scotch-Irish  America.  A  few  genera- 
tions ago  every  soul  on  the  island  bore  this  name,  but 
with  the  dying  out  of  the  clan  system  this  has  disap- 
peared, and  there  are  several  varieties  of  family  names 
in  lona  to-day, — all  pure  Scotch,  however. 

The  ruins  of  lona  as  they  stand  to-day  are  very 
moderate  and  modest  compared  with  those  of  other 
centres  of  attraction  in  this  way, — the  falling  walls  of 
the  old  cathedral,  in  which  you  can  still  trace  transept, 
nave,  and  the  usual  chapels,  the  convent,  the  conse- 
crated burial-ground  of  the  kings,  another  cemetery 
immediately  around  the  church,  the  unique  crosses  at 
these  different  points,  and  the  staunch,  towering  cam- 
panile from  whose  open  windows  the  Christian  bells 
hundreds  of  years  ago  rang  out  over  the  fierce  Northern 
seas.  The  interest  of  these  modest  remains  is  not  in 
themselves,  but  in  the  vast  body  of  associations  which 
they  call  up  and  marshal  in  lengthening  hosts  that  ex- 
tend back  through  centuries. 

In  the  middle  of  the  island  are  found  some  Druidic 


IONA.  259 

remains  of  traditional  interest.  These  are  not  seen  at 
all  by  the  visitor  who  trusts  himself  to  the  one-hour 
tour  of  the  vessel's  guide,  as  they  are  not  on  the  routine 
programme,  their  distance  being  too  great  from  the 
landing.  Before  the  times  of  St.  Columba,  lona  was  a 
famed  centre  of  Druid  worship,  and  the  traces  of  the 
familiar  contour  of  a  Druidic  holy  of  holies  are  yet 
visible  to  patient  search, — the  central  mound  and  the 
circle  of  stones,  the  seats  of  the  angels.  We  discov- 
ered their  location  after  a  good  deal  of  labor,  for  much 
of  it  is  covered  with  the  drift  of  a  thousand  years ;  but, 
once  ascertained,  you  can  quite  definitely  locate  the 
tumuli  and  understand  their  former  relations  and  uses. 
The  central  mound  is  quite  a  hill, — a  sharp,  green  knob 
of  uniform  curve. 

Later  researches,  it  is  claimed,  prove  that  these  stone 
circles  all  over  England  were  not,  as  is  popularly  sup- 
posed, built  by  the  Druids,  who  were  Celts,  but  are  the 
work  of  a  far  anterior  race, — the  men  of  the  Stone  Age. 
The  Stone  Age  came  to  an  end  in  Europe  about  two 
thousand  years  before  the  birth  of  Christ.  Its  shortest 
duration  is  estimated  at  a  term  of  two  thousand  years. 
This  calculation  would  place  the  erection  of  these  primi- 
tive temples,  say y  about  three  thousand  to  four  thou- 
sand years  before  the  Christian  era.  Other  chronolo- 
gies of  the  Stone  Age  would  place  it  still  farther  hack. 

lona  is  one  of  those  remarkable  spots  which,  from 
prehistoric  times,  seem  always  to  have  been  held  as 
sacred  localities, — points  where  God  came  in  contact 
with  the  world,  and  where  He  was  worshipped  and 
revealed  without  regard  to  creed  or  chronology  of 
Church  speaking  "  in  divers  manners  in  times  past/' 
In  spite  of  the  rudeness  and  simplicity  of  its  modern 
face,  of  the  meagreness  of  its  remains,  of  its  bleak  and 
forbidding  location,  it  is  well  worth  visiting  and  study. 
Few  theatres  of  human  history  are  more  impressive. 
It  is  one  of  "  the  places  of  the  earth."  It  is  a  splendid 
page  in  the  militant  history  of  Christianity.  There  the 


260  SCOTLAND. 

bloody  altars  of  Thor  and  Odin  have  smoked,  tended  by 
our  Northern  ancestors.  There  God  at  sundry  times 
in  the  twilight  of  the  ages  spake  to  our  Druid  fathers. 

On  Thursday,  when  the  winds  were  calmed  and  the 
angry  ocean  had  quieted  down  to  comparative  reason, 
we  hired  a  fisherman's  sail-boat,  and,  with  a  pair  of 
small  but  sinewy  Gaelic  seamen  at  the  oars,  pulled  off 
for  a  cruise  among  the  neighboring  islands  to  explore 
the  classic  seas  of  school-boy  legend  and  memory. 
Our  morning's  destination  was  Staffa,  with  its  wondrous 
columnar  formation  ;  our  hope,  that  we  might  be  able 
to  enter  with  our  little  boat  the  surging  portal  of  the 
grand  nave  of  FingaPs  solemn  cave.  Every  wave 
this  morning  was  crested  with  associations  apd  story, 
— behind,  the  campanile  of  lona,  with  Oronsay  and 
Colonsay,  twin  islets  of  saints  and  mediaeval  miracles 
and  sacred  tradition ;  ahead,  the  frowning  masses  of 
Mull,  the  famous  stronghold  of  the  Lords  of  the  Isles, 
and  "  Ulva  dark"  and  the  broader  lands  of  the  Lords 
of  Ullin. 

'  Oh  !  I'm  the  chief  of  Ulva's  isle, 
And  this  Lord  Ullin's  daughter." 

We  skirted  the  shores  of  the  tragic  escapade,  and 
sailed  over  the  spot  where  the  "  waters  wild"  went  over 
the  fated  lovers. 

Fingal's  Cave,  with  its  strange  basaltic  columns,  its 
curiously  ecclesiastical  effect  of  Gothic  roof,  pillared 
nave,  and  choir  of  thundering  surges,  with  its  dim 
religious  lights  of  green  and  purple  and  gold  reflected 
from  the  waves  below,  is  a  most  impressive  and  unique 
sight,  but  it  hardly  deserves  its  relative  rank  among 
the  wonders  of  the  world  gotten  from  our  crude  geog- 
raphies, written  at  a  time  when  the  modern  world  was 
unexplored,  when  America  and  Australia  and  Africa 
and  the  great  table-lands  of  Inolia  and  Central  Asia 
were  unknown. 


IONA.  261 

This  picturesquely  imposing  cavern  is  a  great  cleft 
in  the  primeval  rock,  two  hundred  and  twenty-two 
feet  long,  forty-two  feet  wide  at  the  entrance,  and  in 
height  sixty-six  feet  at  mean  tide.  The  bottom  is 
always  a  flood  of  roaring  water.  The  sides  are  nearly 
parallel,  and  rise  up  perpendicularly,  closing  away  up 
in  a  vaulted  roof.  They  are  not  plain  walls,  however, 
but  solid  masses  of  pentagonal  and  hexagonal  columns 
of  wonderful  symmetry,  and  many  of  them  monoliths. 
They  present  the  eifect  of  innumerable  corridors  of 
columns, — aisles  and  aisles  of  them.  As  a  picture,  the 
cave  most  resembles  the  mighty  nave  of  some  great 
cathedral  arched  in  the  foundation-rock.  Into  this 
grand  church  the  waves,  with  a  noise  far  below  the 
range  of  any  human  organ,  grander  and  deeper,  surge 
forever  forward  and  backward,  singing  unto  each  other 
in  eternal  antiphone. 

Staffa's  Island  is  but  a  little  bit  of  grass  and  soil, 
just  enough  to  respectably  cover  the  basaltic  ribs  of  its 
great  wonder.  You  can  climb  to  the  top  of  it  and  get 
a  grand  view  of  the  entrance  of  the  cave  from  over- 
head. You  can  climb  around  the  side  over  hundreds 
of  broken  pillars  washed  down  during  the  ages  by  the 
ceaseless  violence  of  the  waves,  and  enter  the  cavern, 
finding  your  way  from  one  rude  pedestal  to  another 
along  the  edge  of  the  columnar  wall. until  you  reach 
about  where  the  altar  would  be  in  a  church,  and  here 
the  spot  where  the  thunderous  surges  break  against  the 
massive  rock  foundation  of  the  island  with  a  noise 
mightier  than  that  of  the  waves,  and  with  deep  re- 
sounding bass  echoes  that  never  die  away. 

Unfortunately,  the  condition  of  the  waters  was  such 
that  the  Gaelic  fishermen  would  not  attempt  to  put  their 
boats  in,  and  we  had  to  be  content  with  this  kind  of 
view  of  the  cave,  landing  on  the  rear  of  the  island  and 
clambering  around  over  the  slippery  bases  denuded  of 
their  shafts. 

This  rude  Gaelic  land  of  the  Argyllshire  coast  and 


262  SCOTLAND. 

the  Hebrides  is  known  as  part  of  the  Highlands  of 
Scotland,  although,  of  course,  it  is  on  the  level  of  the 
sea.  Highland  is  now  an  ethnological  rather  than  a 
topographical  distinction.  The  people  here,  too,  rude 
and  meagre  as  is  their  life,  have  all  the  fierce  spirit  of 
freedom  and  the  strong  self-respect  of  the  clans  of  the 
hills.  They  prove  their  blood.  The  only  man,  woman, 
or  child  in  all  Europe  who  ever  refused  a  gratuity  at 
my  hands  was  a  little  Highland  boy  of  lona,  and  I  put 
it  on  record  to  the  credit  of  his  land.  One  who  has 
travelled  in  Europe  will  know  how  much  it  means. 

The  Scotch  have  certainly  acquired  all  the  world 
over  an  unfortunate  low-grade  reputation  for  being 
"canny/7  and  canny,  in  the  way  it  has  come  to  be  ap- 
plied as  their  national  characteristic,  means  only  self- 
ishness and  cunning.  It  certainly,  however,  does  not 
come  from  the  Highlands.  The  Highlanders  to-day 
are  mostly  poor,  and  they  always  have  been  so.  They 
are  not  a  money-making  or  a  money-loving  race,  and 
they  have  always  been  ready  to  sacrifice  their  property 
for  their  principles,  their  reputation,  or  their  vengeance. 
IONA. 


NORTHERN  ITALY 


CHAPTER    XXVIII. 

VENICE. 

ST.  MARK'S  GRAND  GRAVE — GRACIOUS  INFLUENCES  OF  THB 
SEA — A  CITY  SET  AS  A  STAGE  SCENE — STREET  LIFE  IN 

-  VENICE — THE  LARES  AND  PENATES — CHURCH  AND  STATE — 
THE  SACRED  BIRDS  OF  VENICE — VENUS  APHRODITE. 

VENICE  blazons .  as  her  city  arms  the  Lion  of  Sir 
Mark, — the  winged  beast  of  the  Apocalypse, — and  the 
selection  is  appropriate,  for  in  a  certain  sense  the  city 
herself  is  apocalyptic  in  being  like  to  no  other  place  on 
the  face  of  the  earth  or  in  the  waters  under. 

This  lovely  city,  that  floats  like  a  picture  on  the  sea, 
is  in  fact  and  in  spirit  the  splendid  mausoleum  and 
monument  of  St.  Mark,  the  humble  shoemaker-evan- 
gelist. They  bore  his  remains  here  one  thousand  years 
ago  from  Alexandria,  and  his  worship,  the  honor  of  his 
name,  the  glory  of  his  legends,  became  at  once  the  civic 
life  of  the  town.  It  was  a  quaint,  mediaeval  habit,  sug- 
gestive of  the  historic  life  of  those  times,  for  all  the 
cities  to  take  to  themselves  some  saint  as  a  local  deity, 
and  their  existence  thenceforth  took  life  and  color  from 
his  name  and  spirit, — was  bound  up  with  it.  The  city 
and  the  saint  went  on  together  when  once  their  fortunes 
were  thus  joined.  He  prayed  for  his  people  in  heaven 
above,  and  sometimes  came  down  with  spear  and  shield 
to  fight  their  battles  below.  In  return  they  glorified 
his  name  on  earth. 

St.  Mark  sleeps  his  final  rest  in  the  grand  cathedral 

which  bears  his  name  and  fronts  the  magnificent  piazza 

San  Marco.     The  cathedral  is  one  of  the  great  churches 

of  the  world;  the  piazza  is  unique  in  brilliancy  and 

M  23  265 


266  NORTHERN  ITALT. 

splendor  and  pleasing  life, — a  picture  that,  perhaps,  no 
other  place  can  offer.  The  whole  city  to-day  is  crested 
and  carved  with  the  images  and  legends  of  its  patron 
saint.  His  lion  crouches  and  sleeps  and  rears  and  flies 
on  column  and  porch  and  palace  and  church  and  pave- 
ment, and  the  loyal  artists  of  Venice  have  faithfully 
wrestled  on  canvas  and  in  stone  with  the  kindred  beasts 
of  the  Apocalypse  to  do  him  company.  St.  Mark  is 
fortunate  in  his  apotheosis.  His  is  the  city  of  poetry 
and  splendor. 

Just  think  what  Venice  gained  over  the  cities  of  the 
earth  when  she  was  taken  under  the  protection  of  the 
sea. 

"-  No  grimy  locomotive,  breathing  smoke  and  soot,  can 
ever  go  groaning  and  shrieking  through  the  streets, 
leaving  a  trail  of  black  dirt  in  its  offensive  rear. 

No  wagons  rattle  and  rumble,  no  horses  clatter  with 
dissonant  noise,  over  her  streets  and  stones.  Her 
sounds  are  all  of  music. 

Washed  forever  by  the  slowly  falling  and  rising 
waters,  there  is  no  dust  in  her  streets  or  on  her  marble- 
floored  squares :  one  leaves  windows  up  as  safely  as  in 
country  groves. 

Being  no  dust,  there  is  comparatively  little  dirt. 
Even  rough  work  hardly  soils  the  clothes  of  the  toilers, 
and  her  gondoliers — the  stable-smelling  hackmen  and 
cabbies  of  other  towns — do  their  work  to  song  and  in 
bright,  clean  linen. 

Finally,  the  cool  sea-breezes  forever  sweep  her  stones, 
and  there  are  freshness  and  bracing  salt  air  in-doors  and 
out  from  morning  till  night,  and  till  morning  again. 

It  is  these  softening  and  gracious  influences  of  the 
sea  on  its  daily  life  and  being  that  give  to  Venice  her 
peculiar  charm  and  distinctive  beauty.  It  has  been  my 
good  fortune  to  see  the  city  in  the  splendor  of  pure  sun- 
shine by  day  and  under  the  mellowing  softness  of  moon- 
light by  night.  It  is  a  picture — a  dream — something 
one  feels  too  lovely  for  the  prosaic  life  of  mortal  men 


VENICE.  267 

The  life  of  all  Venice  convergas  and  centres  in  the 
grand  Square  of  St.  Mark's,  and  in  the  evening, — it 
seems  then  a  perpetual  scene  set  for  the  representation 
of  some  grand  spectacular  opera,  only  that  the  proper- 
ties, instead  of  being  pasteboard,  are  the  finest  palaces 
and  architecture  in  the  world,  and  the  music  is  human 
life  and  pleasure.  You  think  the  curtain  must  fall. 
It  does  fall  towards  midnight,  but  it  rises  again  next 
evening. 

Imagine  a  vast  space  say  in  length  from  the  Union 
League  House  to  the  Academy  of  Music  in  Philadel- 
phia, and  in  width  perhaps  three  times  that  of  Broad 
Street,  paved  smooth  with  marble  and  blocks  of 
trachyte,  shut  off  from  the  noise  of  wheels  or  horses. 
On  the  one  side  the  floating  domes  of  the  great  By/an- 
tine  cathedral  and  its  grand  arched  fronts,  with  their 
golden  mosaics  lu.-trous  in  the  night-time,  on  the 
other  the  famous  Palace  of  the  Doges,  wasteful  in 
magnificence;  the  towering  shaft  of  the  Campanile, 
with  its  colonnades  of  white  arches  fluttering  in  the 
air,  and  up  to  whose  very  pinnacle  you  could  ride  a 
horse,  so  wonderful  is  the  engineering  of  the  interior 
ascent ;  the  three  tall  red  mast-like  spires  draped  with 
the  colors  of  Italy, — columns  so  ancient  and  strange 
that  tradition  can  hardly  tell  their  origin, — and  all 
around  a  continuous  chain  of  stately  marble  palaces, 
stained  with  age  and  time.  Imagine  all  this,  and  you 
have  the  faint  outlines  of  St.  Mark's  piazza.  Around 
three  sides  of  the  square  there  runs  a  covered  archway 
lined  with  shops  and  supported  by  a  corridor  of  col- 
umns, on  which  rest  the  fronts  of  the  palaces.  In  the 
evening  these  shops  are  brilliantly  lighted,  a  glittering 
line  of  fire  encircling  the  piazza.  In  front  of  this  cor- 
ridor of  columns,  when  the  falling  shadows  draw  towards 
sunset,  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  chairs  and  little  tables 
are  set  out  before  the  cafes.  At  these  tables  citizens 
and  strangers  gather  in  families  and  parties  to  eat  ices, 
sip  coffee,  eau  suvr&,  light  wines,  drink  beer,  and  smoke, 


268  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

children,  women,  old  men,  young,  middle-aged,  and  all. 
In  fact,  Venice  does  its  visiting  at  these  tables,  and  one 
can  pick  out  the  belles  of  the  city  at  a  glance  by  the  dark, 
bee-like  clusters  which  surpound  their  mothers'  tables. 

On  to  this  grand  stage  the  whole  city  throws  itself 
every  evening, — all  classes,  all  ages,  all  the  world  of 
Venice.  A  large  military  band  of  many  pieces  takes 
its  station  in  the  centre,  and  there  is  good  music  all 
evening  for  everybody, — free.  In  the  mean  while,  those 
people  not  sitting,  or  who  do  not  come  to  thus  enjoy 
themselves,  promenade  under  the  brilliant  corridors  or 
down  and  up  the  long  aisles  formed  by  the  masses  of 
chairs,  filing,  passing,  returning,  all  the  evening. 
If  you  sit  in  the  front  rows  of  chairs  you  can  see,  thus 
at  rest,  the  whole  life  of  the  city  stream  before  you,  and 
it  is  this  scene  which  is  so  irresistibly  operatic  in  its 
effect, — the  whole  town  moving  and  living  for  an  even- 
ing to  music. 

All  classes  mingle  and  jostle,  and  in  such  a  setting  the 
sailors  of  all  climes,  gathered  here  from  East  and  West, — 
sufficiently  rough  and  prosaic  elsewhere,  here  all  washed 
and  clean, — look  like  wandering  tenors,  disguised  noble- 
men, lost  heirs.  There  pass  before  you  Venetian 
dames  stately  in  black-lace  veils,  and  demoiselles  with 
wondrous  blond  hair  and  the  open  slipper  dear  to  the 
heart  of  feminine  Italy ;  swarthy  Lascars  in  white  cot- 
ton ;  water-girls  "  with  rings  on  their  fingers ;"  flower- 
girls  (somewhat  mature, — another  theatrical  touch) ; 
merchants  of  the  Orient  all-brilliant  in  slashed  scarlet 
robes  and  fez  caps;  gay  gondoliers  in  blue  and  white; 
the  d6  bonnair  officers  of  Italy's  army  in  blue  and 
gold;  naval  officers  from  the  ships  in  port  of  all  na- 
tions ;  Greeks  with  their  clear-cut  cameo-like  profiles ; 
beggars  happy  for  the  evening  and  avoiding  "shop" 
for  the  moment  as  a  point  of  honor ;  the  handsome  men 
of  Italy,  lithe,  active,  dark  ;  travellers  of  all  tongues 
and  lands,  labelled  with  red  books ;  and  the  ever-present 
British  female  tourist  with  stout  boots, — all  the  world. 


VENICE.  269 

This  is  the  every-night  opera  f  Venice, — music, 
flowers,  costumes,  statuary,  columns,  arcaded  vistas, 
moonlights,  star,  legended  trophies,  golden  paintings. 
Do  we  wonder  that,  with  all  this  luxury  as  an  inheri- 
tance and  education,  the  Venetian  of  to-day  has  grown 
somewhat  indolent,  and  takes  his  exercise  in  sleeping 
in  a  gondola  or  inhaling  the  fragrance  of  a  flower  in 
some  arched  and  grated  palace  window? 

This  brilliant  panorama  lasts  till  about  midnight. 
At  ten  o'clock  the  shops  begin  to  take  in  their  glitter- 
ing wares  and  close ;  at  half-past  ten  o'clock  the  music 
ceases,  and  the  ladies  then  begin  to  leave.  Shortly  after 
eleven  o'clock  the  place  is  abandoned  to  gentlemen. 
Then  the  waiters  begin  to  stack  up  the  chairs,  the 
lights  one  by  one  go  out,  and  shortly  the  dark  shadows 
of  the  pafeces  fall  on  an  empty  square. 

Venice  goes  to  bed  as  early  as  Philadelphia  or  Bos- 
ton or  New  York,  and  earlier  than  Paris  or  London, 
notwithstanding  all  the  fascinations  of  sea-air  and  moon- 
light that  might  well  tempt  her  to  stay  up  all  night. 
It  is  a  commonplace  of  travellers,  and  sometimes  even 
of  the  guide-book,  yet  to  assert  that  the  Venetians  turn 
night  into  day.  There  was  a  time  lon^  ago  when  they 
did,  when  the  city  was  powerful  and  rich,  and  was 
lived  in  and  ruled  by  a  class  of  wealthy  and  luxurious 
nobles.  Then  all  this  grand  square  was  lined  with 
gambling-rooms  and  houses  of  pleasure,  and  men  ate 
and  drank  and  played  and  lost  their  fortunes,  and  the 
whole  place  was  a  blaze  of  light  until  morning. 

Now,  Venice,  like  the  rest  of  Italy,  is  poor,  and  her 
habits  are  simple.  One  of  the  most  marked  features 
of  an  evening  on  the  piazza  is  the  innocence  and  ex- 
treme simplicity  of  the  pleasures  of  this  people.  They 
will  spend  a  whole  evening  with  almost  no  expendi- 
ture of  money  or  movement.  A  tiny  cup  of  coffee  will 
last  a  gentleman  the  whole  evening,  and  he  appears  to  be 
always  busy  in  its  consumption.  A  very  small  saucer 
of  ice  or  a  small  glass  of  water  colored  by  a  drop  of 

23* 


270  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

anisette  does  the  same  service  for  a  lady.  A  single 
"  pony"  glass  of  beer  and  a  two-cent  cigar  employ  an 
officer  of  the  army  for  an  hour  or  two.  I  do  not  think 
the  average  visitor  at  these  cafe's  spends  ten  cents  a 
night.  For  this  he  lias  a  table  and  chair  all  t  le  even- 
ing, a  cool  seat,  excellent  music,  the  view  of  the  prome- 
nade, the  opportunity  to  make  calls  or  receive  visits, 
rest,  conversation,  moonlight,  flowers. 

The  flower-girls  are  a  feature  and  a  part  of  the  en- 
tertainment. They  circulate  among  the  chairs  with  a 
basket  of  flowers,  giving  one  to  each  gentleman  for  his 
button-hole  and  to  the  ladies  with  him.  This  is  a  gift 
offered  with  all  the  coquetry  and  compliment  in  the 
vender's  power.  The  stranger,  who  is  addressed  in 
French,  returns  his  gift  at  once  in  money.  The  Vene- 
tians do  not,  but  at  intervals,  and  not  at  the  tables,  give 
their  flower-friend  some  gift.  She,  in  return,  regularly 
decorates  them  every  evening  with  a  little  bouquet. 

There  is  music  all  the  evening,  but,  with  the  national 
inclination  to  inaction,  no  dancing.  I  have,  remarked 
this  all  over  Italy.  On  the  fe"te-days  and  in  the  even- 
ings in  the  villages  there  is  always  good  instrumental 
music,  but  the  people  never  dance,  only  move  gently 
around  from  place  to  place,  half  walking,  half  standing. 

Venice's  great  impression  is  its  street  life, — so  bril- 
liant, so  highly  colored,  so  unlike  that  of  any  other 
city.  The  commonplace  shows  of  the  guide-books  are 
flat  and  disappointing, — the  prisons,  dungeons,  Bridge 
of  Sighs,  and  so  forth.  The  school-girl  glamour  thrown 
over  these  places  is  mainly  traceable,  I  suppose,  to 
Byron's  sentimental  verse. 

The  daily  picture  of  all  Venice,  however,  is  some- 
thing of  which  one  never  tires,  and  which  changes  ever 
with  the  hour.  Gondola  life  is  something  deliciously 
dreamy  and  luxurious  in  the  soft  light  of  day  or  under 
the  sheen  of  moon  and  starlight.  Let  dark  night  come 
and  rain,  however,  and  these  long,  narrow,  deep,  black 
boats,  seen  mysteriously  from  the  faint  point  of  light 


VENICE.  271 

on  their  prow,  take  to  themselves  the  likeness  of  float- 
ing coffins  steered  by  the  shades.  The  effect  is  inde- 
scribably sepulchral.  You  seem  to  be  alone  in  the 
waters  of  Hades  among  the  spirits.  The  gondolas  are 
all  of  a  funereal  black, — painted  black,  carved  in  black, 
with  black  draperies  over  the  dark  cabin.  Many  cen- 
turies ago  a  Venetian  law  ordered  this  pattern  and 
color,  for  a  good  reason  of  that  time.  The  laws  in 
Venice  do  not  change,  and  the  gondolas  are  all  black 
and  ghostly  to  this  day. 

The  streets  are  very  narrow  and  blaze  with  light. 
Their  narrowness — sometimes  not  over  three  feet — 
makes  a  very  little  light  serve  to  brilliantly  illuminate 
them,  and  the  jets  in  the  shop  windows,  kept  open  till 
late  at  night,  keep  them  bright  and  blazing  almost 
without  the  out-door  lamps.  Through  them  the  peo- 
ple surge  in  constant  streams,— all  nations,  all  classes, 
all  colors.  You  study  the  world,  but  even  the  Vene- 
tians themselves  present  some  strong  contrasts,  for  they 
in  time  are  made  up  of  the  blood  of  many  people. 
One  striking  contrast,  which  you  soon  note,  is  that  the 
Venetian  men,  as  a  body,  are  dark,  their  women  blond. 
The  sounds,  too,  are  poly  glottal,  and  everything  is 
international.  Venice  will  likely  be,  for  instance,  the 
tourist's  first  experience  of  Greek  money,  which  is  cur- 
rent coin  here. 

At  every  corner  you  come  are  the  little  shrines  and 
altars  to  the  Virgin  and  the  saints,  built  in  dwelling- 
houses  and  over  the  shops,  with  lamps  burning  before 
them.  These  bright-colored  shrines,  with  their  glass 
frames  and  swinging,  censer-like  lights,  produce  a  very 
picturesque  effect,  especially  when  the  niches  are  reflected 
by  the  water.  You  feel  with  a  new  meaning  the  poetry 
of  the  litany,  Ave  Maria,  stdla  marls.  Indeed,  the 
sea  is  very  gracious  and  beneficent  to  Venice,  in  that  it 
doubles  all  her  beauties  and  splendors.  She  has  her 
stars  in  the  heavens  and  under  her  feet,  her  palaces 
above  the  earth  and  under  the  waters.  Her  beautiful 


272  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

bridges  span  their  solid  piers  and  tremble  in  the  waves 
below  them.  Everything  has  a  double  form  of  grace 
and  beauty, — a  life  of  marble  and  a  life  of  motion. 

To  return  to  the  shrines :  their  images  are  here,  as 
elsewhere  in  Italy,  the  Lares  and  Penates  of  the  modern 
Romans,  and  this  domestic  worship,  perpetual  and 
hourly,  and  the  devotion  and  love  and  apparent  faitli 
of  the  homely  service,  is  something  very  pleasing  and 
touching.  It  is  only  a  pleasant  illusion,  however. 
The  cultus  of  these  shrines  is,  I  fear,  but  an  inherited 
habit, — a  custom,  a  usage, — not  an  intelligent  act.  I 
regret  to  say  that  no  amount  of  shrines  or  altars  in  an 
Italian  shop  will  prevent  your  being  shamelessly  treated 
there.  I  do  not  think  a  Madonna  on  the  very  counter 
of  daily  fraud  would  protect  you. 

In  Venice  they  sell  fresh  water  on  the  streets  in 
bottles  and  by  the  glass,  and  people  are  constantly 
drinking  it.  I  have  not  seen  so  much  water-drinking 
in  all  Europe,  and  the  habit  seems  to  be  a  confirmed 
one.  There  may  be  an  useful  hint  for  temperance 
societies  in  this  little  fact. 

The  cathedral  church  of  St.  Mark  is  perhaps  the 
central  architectural  feature  of  Venice;  at  all  events,  it 
divides  the  honor  with  the  rich  Palace  of  the  Doges. 
It  is  the  great  triumph  of  Romano-Byzantine  archi- 
tecture, and  in  its  profusion  of  ornament  and  wealth 
of  decoration  mingles  the  splendors  of  two  civilizations, 
— of  the  East  and  of  the  West.  In  its  shrines  are 
the  most  precious  workmanship  of  Constantinople, 
costly  gems,  rare  marbles  of  Europe,  pillars  from  the 
temple  of  Solomon.  Under  the  great  altar  rests  the 
stolen  body  of  St.  Mark.  Its  treasury  of  relics  contains 
some  of  the  most  precious  memorials  of  faith, — a  piece 
of  the  head  of  St.  John,  a  fragment  of  the  sacred 
column  of  the  Passion,  a  vial  of  the  blood  of  Christ. 
Its  pictures  of  the  masters  and  its  old  statues  teach 
tradition,  history,  and  religion  to  the  people,  whose 
thronging,  treading  feet  for  centuries  have  worn  the 


VENICE.  273 

marbles  of  its  floors  uneven  and  fluctuating  like  the 
waves  of  the  sea.  It  is  a  temple, — an  eternal  monu- 
ment and  lesson  to  Venice. 

In  the  vestibule  of  this  cathedral,  itself  a  stately 
hall  larger  and  grander  than  most  of  the  churches  of 
our  country,  they  show  three  great  red,  flat  stones, 
forming  a  broad  stairway,  as  the  spot  of  the  historic 
reconciliation  between  the  Emperor  Frederick  Barba- 
rossa  and  Pope  Alexander  III.,  an  affair  in  which  the 
conciliation,  as  was  the  fashion  of  those  times,  was  all 
on  one  side.  "Non  tibi  sed  Petro"  ("  Not  to  you,  but 
to  St.  Peter"),  said  the  dishonored  emperor  when  he 
knelt,  probably  feeling  that  he  was  doing  something 
wrong,  although  he  may  not  have  known  how  great 
was  the  magnitude  of  the  trust  he  was  betraying,  and 
which  he  had  better  have  died  to  protect.  u Mihi  et 
Petro"  ("  To  me  and  Peter"),  said  the  modest  pope. 

And  so  it  is  every  where  in  Europe.  There  is  hardly 
a  great  church  on  the  Continent  which,  in  some  shape 
or  other,  in  painting  or  marble  or  brass  or  ostentatious 
relic,  does  not  contain  some  deliberate  and  insolent 
affront  to  the  civil  authority, — some  perpetual  assertion 
of  the  claim  of  Rome  to  supreme  political  power.  St. 
Peter's,  the  first  church  of  the  world,  is  full  of  them, 
and  they  are  repeated  so  systematically  everywhere 
that  their  presence  seems  to  be  the  result  of  a  policy 
and  an  order.  Remember  that  in  Europe  the  churches 
are  the  common  schools  of  the  people,  who  frequent 
them  daily  from  childhood,  studying  their  pictures, 
carvings,  statues,  bronzes,  columns,  and  receiving  their 
first  and  most  lasting  impressions  from  them.  I  do  not 
wonder  any  more  at  Bismarck's  relentless  and  uncom- 
promising warfare  on  the  ecclesiastical  organization  of 
Rome.  I  only  wonder  that  any  strong  men  who  have 
ever  attempted  to  found  a  state  or  been  intrusted  with 
the  keeping  of  the  civil  liberties  of  the  people  have  not 
made  the  same  war,  and  made  it  more  bitterly. 

Every  one  knows  the  story  of  the  civic  pigeons  of 


274  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

Venice,  and  meets  them  like  old  acquaintances  when 
he  goes  there ;  and  the  birds  meet  all  the  world  in  the 
same  way.  They  belong  to  history  and  legend,  and 
have  been  translated  from  their  lower  life  and  taken 
into  the  fellowship  of  men.  Within  an  hour  of  my 
coming  one  of  these  pigeons  looked  in  at  my  window 
facing  on  the  grand  piazza,  and  after  a  few  moments' 
cautious  reconnoitring  was  trustingly  and  fearlessly 
feeding  from  my  hand.  Seeing  what  was  going  on,  a 
whole  flock  came  swiftly  trooping  in  from  all  sides,  en- 
tirely bankrupting  my  limited  commissariat  provision 
in  a  moment  or  two. 

Many  hundreds  of  years  ago  some  pigeons  "assisted7' 
at  a  great  victory  had  by  the  Venetians  over  Candia, 
I  think,  by  carrying  very  important  despatches.  The 
victorious  general  sent  them  home  with  the  news  of  his 
triumph,  and  grateful  Venice  adopted  the  birds  as  the 
"  wards  of  the  nation."  To  this  time  their  descendants 
are  fed  every  day  in  the  great  square  of  St.  Mark,  at 
the  expense  of  the  city,  and  no  one  in  Venice  ever 
touches  a  pigeon.  They  rest  at  night  in  the  eaves  of 
the  palaces  and  the  cornices  of  the  great  cathedral,  on 
triumphal  columns  and  arches,  and  in  the  airy  arcades 
of  the  campanili.  They  nestle  with  the  winged  lions 
and  dart  noiselessly  through  the  churches.  They  brush 
the  sacred  altars  and  the  tombs  of  kings  and  doges  and 
bishops.  They  walk  the  marble  pavements  in  groups 
and  in  hundreds,  unmolested  among  throngs  of  passers. 
They  play  with  the  children  and  fly  up  on  to  your  cafe" 
table  for  their  share  of  the  cake  or  water.  They  do 
just  what  all  other  birds  and  animals  would  do  if  man 
only  treated  them  with  humanity, — but  gave  them  their 
"civil  rights." 

Venice  is  a  mirror  in  which  you  study  the  influence 
of  the  sea  on  the  human  race, — on  its  physical,  political, 
and  intellectual  development.  It  has  conditioned  and 
determined  the  physical  appearance,  the  daily  life,  the 
history,  the  art,  of  this  people. 


VENICE.  275 

They  were  sailors,  of  course,  and  became  a  naval 
power,  and  their  whole  outside  history  and  political 
relations  started  from  that  point  and  have  been  condi- 
tioned by  it  for  ten  centuries.  The  cleanliness  and  ease 
of  transportation  induced  luxury  and  magnificence,  a 
wealth  of  coloring  and  costume,  which  the  daily  life  of 
no  other  city  could  support.  One  can  go  anywhere 
over  Venice  in  a  soft  dress  shoe.  The  pavements  are 
smooth  as  floors  and  spotless,  the  gondolas  are  car- 
peted. The  protection  to  dress  is  as  great  out-doors  as 
in.  The  gorgeous  costumes  of  Titian  and  Tintoretto 
and  the  Venetian  school  are  but  the  legitimate  develop- 
ment of  the  social  life  of  a  class  of  nobles  in  a  city  built 
as  this  is,  and  drawing  on  both  the  Orient  and  the  Oc- 
cident for  treasures  of  sumptnousness,  luxury,  and  dis- 
play. Their  pictures,  of  course,  breathe  the  luxurious 
and  color-loving  spirit  of  their  time,  for  they,  too,  are 
part  of  its  development,  but  they  arc  also  portraits, 
faithful  copies  of  the  very  picture  of  the  citv. 

More  directly  in  the  famous  glass  of  Venice  you  see 
imprisoned  the  elusive  colors  of  the  sea  itself.  Art  has 
simply  taken  its  lesson  from  the  waves. 

Again,  the  moment  you  enter  this  town  you  meet 
everywhere,  at  random  among  all  classes,  perhaps  most 
noticeably  among  the  poorer,  that  beautiful  female  lace 
which  is  the  glory  of  Venice,  and  which  her  painters 
have  made  immortal, — a  soft  sea-shell  complexion  of 
delicate  loveliness,  Titian  eyes,  and  a  wealth  of  golden 
blond  hair, — a  kind  of  Venus  Aphrodite  face.  .It  is 
the  sea  again. 

And  so  you  may  trace  endlessly  its  visible  influence 
here  at  every  turn  and  every  way  you  look.  The  old 
traditional  ceremony  of  state  when  the  new  Doge,  on 
behalf  of  Venice,  in  solemn  form,  celebrates  its  nuptials 
with  the  sea  and  casts  into  its  waters  the  wedding-ring, 
is  something  more  than  a  legend.  It  is  history  and 
fact.  Venice — the  Venetian  race — is  the  child  of  Man 
by  the  Sea. 


276  NORTHERN  ITALY. 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

GENOA. 

THE  GREAT  DEAD  AND  THE  LITTLE  LIVING — FIVE  HUNDRED 
YEARS  WITHOUT  SUNLIGHT  —  THE  CROSS  OF  MALTA  — 
POVERTY,  WANT,  AND  WRETCHEDNESS  THAT  WK  CALL  THE 
PICTURESQUE  —  PRIESTS  AND  SOLDIERS  —  SAN  LORENZO — 
AN  ITALIAN  SUNDAY-SCHOOL — THE  PRACTICAL  SIDE  OF 
THE  ITALIANS  —  KAILWAY  MANAGEMENT — THE  MARBLE 
WEALTH. 

A  SORT  of  dreamy  listlessness  falls  over  one  in  Genoa, 
which  it  is  hard  to  define,  and  harder  still  to  resist. 
The  weight  of  the  centuries  seems  to  come  down,  and 
repress  individual  action  or  vigor  by  dwarfing  its 
results  in  contrasting  them  with  the  movements  of 
ages.  Men  have  lived  on  this  spot — in  this  town — for 
twenty-five  hundred  years  of  recorded  history;  have 
worked,  loved,  fought,  died.  What  is  one  human 
atom,  however  brilliant  his  momentary  position  or 
achievement,  in  all  the  vast  stream  of  life  ! 

I  think  this  feeling  must  unconsciously  oppress  this 
people,  and  bar  the  way  to  that  individual  energy  and 
vigor  whose  sum  makes  human  progress.  At  all 
events,  they  act  so.  For  thousands  of  years  life  has 
gone  on  quietly  or  stormily,  'and  the  Genoese  of  to-day 
live  and  act  as  if  they  had  thousands  of  years  yet  to 
come,  and  a  day,  a  week,  or  year  was  of  no  account. 
Why  hurry,  with  whole  centuries  yet  of  time? 

For  this  very  reason,  perhaps,  Genoa  is  such  a 
picturesque  and  pleasing  city.  Spared  largely  from 
the  destructive  rush  of  travel,  it  preserves  somewhat 
of  its  mediaeval  flavor,  and  retains  the  charm  of  dis- 
tinctive sight  and  sound  which  all  European  cities  are 
losing  so  fast. 


GENOA.  277 

It  is  hard  to  describe  Genoa  and  its  unique  life  and 
ways  to  the  American  mind  used  to  regularity  and 
construction.  You  live  here  from  tradition;  your 
houses,  your  streets,  are  all  handed  down  from  cen- 
turies. You  only  accept  them  ;  you  are  not  responsi- 
ble for  them  or  expected  to  account  for  them.  There 
is  no  city  surveyor  with  a  whole  digest  of  brand-new 
municipal  ordinances.  No  two  streets  run  parallel,  and 
no  one  street  runs  for  any  length  in  one  direction.  No 
two  houses  stand  on  the  same  line.  No  wall  even  stands 
perpendicular.  The  windows  appear  where  they  have 
a  mind  to;  the  doors  are  mere  holes  in  the  wall  at  any 
place,  behind  a  buttress  or  around  an  angle.  I  chose 
for  my  temporary  residence  "  the  Hotel  of  the  Cross 
of  Malta,"  an  old  historic  pile,  consecrated  as  the  head- 
quarters, hundreds  of  years  ago,  of  the  Knights  of 
Malta,  who  gathered  here  to  plan  their  campaigns  and 
embark  for  the  Holy  Land.  Hardly  any  two  rooms 
have  exactly  the  same  level.  The  floors  are  hopelessly 
involved,  and  strange  doors  tempt  you  to  mysterious 
passages  at  every  corner.  The  place  is  yet  lordly  in 
its  lowered  uses.  Corridors  of  marble  stairways  lined 
with  exotic  plants  and  flowers  greet  your  entrance. 
You  dine  and  read  and  smoke  in  noble  rooms  twenty 
feet  high,  frescoed  by  great  artists,  and  whose  walls 
are  heavy  with  historic  pictures.  Statues  of  great  men 
in  bronze  and  marble  look  down  on  yon  from  pedestals 
and  niches  at  every  turn.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Scipio 
Africanus  was  the  first  figure  which  met  my  eyes  as  I 
entered  this  hotel,  and  he  presided,  grave  and  thought- 
ful, while  I  watched  the  transfer  of  my  baggage  and 
bargained  for  rooms. 

This  communion  of  the  great  dead  with  the  little 
living  is  a  feature  of  Italy.  At  the  railway  depot  in 
Turin  I  awaited  the  lazy  pleasure  of  the  custom-house 
officials  in  a  magnificent  hall  thirty  feet  high,  frescoed 
with  lovely  Cupids  and  grotesque  Bacchuses,  larger 
than  life,  lit  with  clusters  of  handsome  chandeliers,  and 

24 


278  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

paved  with  marble.  The  other  side  of  the  picture  was 
that  this  ducal  palace  of  a  depot  was  cold  and  chilly. 
But  one-sixteenth  of  the  jets  were  lighted,  and  the 
place  was  so  dismally  gloomy  you  could  hardly  read 
your  ticket.  A  guard  stood  at  each  door  of  this  room, 
and  at  every  possible  entrance  or  doorway  in  the  really 
vast  station-building,  and  effectually  prevented  any 
rapidity  of  movement. 

The  streets  of  old  Genoa  range  from  three  feet  to 
twenty  in  width.  Of  course,  sunlight  never  strikes 
the  flagstones  of  the  three-feet  avenues.  They  must 
be  delightful  summer  resorts,  but  at  this  time  are  rather 
chilly,  even  when  some  parts  of  the  town  are  bright 
with  warm  sunshine  and  redolent  with  exotic  perfumes. 
My  own  room  in  this  aristocratic  old  hotel  has  proba- 
bly never  seen  the  sunshine  for  five  hundred  years. 
When  I  want  sunlight  I  do  as  I  suppose  the  old 
Knights  of  Malta  did, — go  out  and  find  it  on  the  hills 
or  open  piazzas,  where  the  Genoese  eat  confections  and 
drink  the  Falernian  wines  so  thoroughly  advertised  by 
Horace. 

In  these  narrow  streets,  which  close  in  on  each  other 
like  Colorado  cafions,  and  where  the  houses,  which, 
kept  at  a  formal  distance  on  the  first  floor,  kiss  each 
other  at  the  roofs,  fountains  splash  dreamily  all  day, 
and  the  venders  of  small  wares  transact  their  business 
in  song,  exactly  as  in  the  representation  of  an  opera. 
All  day  long  and  far  into  the  night  tenor,  baritone,  and 
chorus  snatches  float  into  my  room,  now  swelling,  now 
dying  away  in  faint  echoes.  It  is  the  work  of  Genoa, 
the  rhythmic  labor  of  Italy,  the  chant  of  the  poor  peo- 
ple working  hard  for  their  daily  macaroni.  It  does 
not  seem  to  us  as  if  work  thus  set  to  music ^md  carried 
on  by  refrain  could  be  very  onerous,  and  perhaps  it  is 
not;  although  it  is  certainly  ceaseless,  but  it  does  not 
matter  much.  There  is  very  little  work  to  do,  and  very 
many  to  do  it,  and  the  man  who  hurried  through  a  day's 
work  in  an  hour  would  only  be  idle  the  rest  of  the  day. 


GENOA.  279 

Out  of  the  window  just  opposite  mine,  and  only  a 
lew  feet  from  it,  all  day  long  there  lolls  an  Italian  girl, 
beautiful,  dirty,  lazy,  badly  dressed,  and  always  eating 
something.  Priest  and  soldier  and  beggar  and  donkey 
and  tourist  and  sailor  flow  on  beneath  in  a  steady 
stream  to  slow  music.  She  gazes  listlessly  on  the  hu- 
man current  forever,  but  takes  no  human  interest  in  it, 
and  shows  signs  of  intelligent  life  but  about  once  every 
half-hour,  when  she  retires  to  a  cupboard  to  fill  her 
pockets  again  with  cake.  It  is  Italy, — only  the  bulk  of 
the  people  do  not  have  cake,  and  get  along  with  garlic. 

There  is  everything  in  Genoa  to  make  the  place 
quaint  and  grotesque.  Not  only  do  the  dark  and  nar- 
row streets  refuse  to  run  anywhere  with  m-tainty,  and 
curve  and  wind  and  twist  with  labyrinthine  complex- 
ity, but  they  run  under  and  over  each  other.  Occa- 
sionally a  great  church  tower  or  spire  serves  as  a  land- 
mark or  beacon  for  a  few  minutes,  but  it,  too,  is  soon 
lost  behind  a  hill  or  under  some  huge  mediaeval  wall, 
and  the  situation  is  more  liopcless  than  ever.  It  is 
useless  to  attempt  to  know  the  streets  or  find  one's  wav. 
The  Genoese  do  it  by  tradition,  but  for  a  stranger  it  is 
lost  time.  When  I  go  out  I  only  walk  and  walk  and 
walk  among  sights  and  sounds  ever  new  ami  shifting, 
and  when  I  am  tired  hire  a  small  boy  or  a  large  man 
— it  is  immaterial  which — to  lead  me  back  to  my  hotel. 
This  service,  from  boy  or  man,  costs  exactly  five  mills. 
In  fact,  five  mills  is  a  very  respectable  sum  here,  and 
with  a  pocket  full  of  copper  centesimi  one  feels  rather 
princely. 

In  truth,  it  is  very  sad  to  see  what  a  copper  coin 
will  do  in  Italy.  It  is  the  only  money  many  of  the 
people  ever  see.  I  have  had  small  shopkeepers  refuse 
to  take  gold  because  they  did  not  know  what  it  was. 
We  in  America — in  Colorado,  Nevada,  and  California 
— decline  daily  to  take  in  change  the  sums  which 
would  support  a  poor  Italian  in  comparative  comfort. 
Could  there  be  any  stronger  contrast  ? 


280  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

In  fact,  amid  all  the  quaintness  and  picturesque  effect 
of  Italy,  so  pleasing  to  the  passing  stranger,  it  is  a  de- 
pressing reflection  ever  recurring  that  it  is  all  the  result 
and  evidence  of  an  awful  poverty, — a  poverty  which 
the  average  American  is  so  fortunate  that  he  cannot 
comprehend.  For  the  unhappy  Italian,  however,  of 
the  lower  class,  it  is  his  only  inheritance  and  the  only 
legacy  he  can  hope  to  leave  his  children.  Yet,  withal, 
he  sings  through  life  like  the  plantation  negro  of 
American  tradition,  but  his  song,  as  the  slave's  was,  is 
largely  a  moan,  a  minor  monotone  like  the  endless  cur- 
rent of  the  ocean.  Better  a  thousand  times  the  crude, 
prosaic  comfort  of  our  prairie  settler  than  the  poetic 
squalor  of  Italy, — the  hopeless  slavery  of  misery  and 
want. 

It  is  strange,  however,  how  the  result  of  centuries  of 
ignorance  and  poverty  and  oppression  is  to  make  a  land 
outwardly  picturesque  and  beautiful.  In  all  Genoa 
there  is  hardly  a  point  from  which  every  view  is  not  a 
picture.  You  stand  anywhere  in  the  old  streets,  turn 
in  any  direction,  and  you  wish  you  had  the  painter's 
pencil.  There  is  a  poetic  effect  of  the  lines  of  the 
buildings  as  well  as  in  the  movement  and  pose  of  the 
people,  and  when  you  add  the  skies  of  Italy  and  the 
fruits,  flowers,  and  perfumes  of  the  Mediterranean,  life 
is  a  poem,  and  you  feel  as  if  it  might  be  better  to  live 
here  in  bodily  poverty  than  to  exist  elsewhere  under 
colder  suns  and  a  less  sympathetic  nature. 

Nevertheless,  this  loveliness  is  all  on  the  outside. 
An  army  of  priests  hold  the  land  in  spiritual  subjec- 
tion, and  heavy  siege-guns  frown  on  all  the  walls. 
Genoa,  in  fact,  is  a  huge  fortress,  compared  with  which 
our  heaviest  fortifications  in  war  times  were  but  toys. 
Here,  as  all  over  Europe,  you  see  heavy  artillery 
mounted  in  the  parks,  sweeping  the  beautiful  fields 
and  the  busy  streets.  Between  cathedrals  and  cannon 
the  people  have  had  a  poor  chance,  and  their  condition 
after  centuries  of  this  kind  of  guardianship  proves  it. 


GENOA.  281 

Cardinal  Wiseman,  in  his  writings  of  years  ago, 
claimed  especial  credit  for  Italy  on  the  point  of  her 
free  schools, — conducted  by  the  Church,  of  course. 
Last  Sunday  I  saw  in  several  churches  what  we  would 
call  a  Sabbath-school,  and  the  sight  was  so  novel  and 
different  from  our  own  that  I  thought  its  description 
would  be  interesting. 

Hearing  music  in  the  cathedral  church  of  San 
Lorenzo — the  great  church  here — as  I  was  passing  it 
about  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  I  entered.  It  was 
so  dark  you  could  hardly  distinguish  human  figures  at 
first,  the  wax  lights  being  mere  fire-flies  in  the  vast 
vaulted  arches,  and  the  long  rows  of  columns  interfer- 
ing with  even  their  feeble  light.  Slowly  the  eye,  how- 
ever, adjusted  itself,  the  shadowy  forms  became  visible, 
and  one  could  find  his  way  about.  Some  fifty  priests 
and  choristers  were  chanting  a  low,  wailing  music,  and 
with  them,  out  of  recesses  from  every  side  and  aisle, 
joined  the  voices  of  the  congregation.  The  service 
here  is,  so  far  as  I  have  seen,  largely  congregational, 
and  the  Italians  being  good  singers,  the  effect  is  artis- 
tically pleasing,  as  well  as  devotional. 

During  this  service,  which  was  just  closing,  I  dis- 
covered that  a  general  interest  seemed  to  centre  in  the 
middle  of  the  church,  where  a  crowd  was  gathered. 
Moving  over  to  it,  I  found  some  thirty  children  ranged 
on  two  lines  of  rude  wooden  benches,  facing  inwards. 
At  each  end  on  chairs,  and  facing  each  other,  sat  two 
teachers,  elderly  gentlemen  of  benign  countenance  and 
in  priestly  vestments.  Around  the  children,  who  were 
all  of  the  poorer  class,  knelt  or  stood  a  crowd  of  their 
relatives  and  friends,  their  mothers,  their  grandparents, 
their  sisters,  their  cousins,  and  their  kindly  neighbors. 
Some  private  soldiers  in  uniform  were  among  the 

froup,  and  other  soldiers,  with   their  swords  on,  were 
neeling    praying    near    us.     A   vender   of  soap    and 
matches  had  brought  in  his  basket  of  wares  and  knelt 
by  it,  praying  half  audibly.     Three  ladies,  well  dressed 

24* 


282  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

and  of  Italian  face  and  figure,  came  in,  took  the  group 
in  at  a  glance,  casting  a  momentary  look  of  curiosity 
at  the  foreign-dressed  stranger,  and  then  dropped  down 
on  their  knees  in  the  outskirts  of  the  crowd,  with  their 
backs  to  it,  however,  and  facing  some  minor  altar,  and 
in  a  moment  were  deeply  absorbed  in  their  own  prayers. 
Near  by,  a  black-eyed  baby  was  dabbling  its  little  hand 
in  the  holy-water  fountain,  its  sister  and  nurse,  a  laugh- 
ing girl  of  about  fifteen,  trying  to  teach  it  to  cross  itself 
properly. 

As  the  singing  ceased  and  the  altar  force  marched 
out  in  procession — an  ecclesiastical  military  company 
— the  teaching  began.  The  children  stood  up  and 
answered  such  questions  as  were  put  to  them.  There 
were  no  books  used.  One  of  the  teachers  seemed  to  be 
a  superior  of  some  kind  inspecting  the  work,  and  what 
was  probably  the  stated  teacher  frequently  prompted 
his  pupils.  In  answer  to  some  question,  one  of  the 
little  ones  made  some  reply  which  I  did  not  under- 
stand. Both  the  priests,  or  teachers,  smiled  kindly, 
and  a  good-natured  laugh  broke  out  from  the  entire 
crowd.  This  crowd,  some  kneeling,  some  sitting  on 
the  floor,  some  standing,  as  was  easiest,  and  a  number 
of  them  women  with  infants  in  their  arms,  took  the 
liveliest  interest  in  what  was  going  on.  A  murmur 
of  applause  often  rewarded  some  of  the  children  for 
good  and  ready  answers,  and  when  a  child  could  not 
answer  or  was  confused,  a  look  of  mortification  and 
wounded  pride  always  came  over  the  little  group  of 
friends  and  supporters  at  its  back. 

The  instruction  was  thoroughly  conversational  and 
kindly,  but  intelligent  and  earnest.  The  scene  was 
picturesque  and  pretty,  and  you  felt  the  work  was 
doing  good.  You  could  not  but  wonder,  however,  at 
its  small  .^cope  compared  with  the  population  and  the 
dignity  of  the  machinery.  Genoa  is  a  town  of  over 
one  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  souls.  San  Lorenzo 
is  its  cathedral.  Attached  to  this  cathedral  there  is 


GENOA.  283 

an  ecclesiastical  force  which  no  Protestant  church  ever 
has,  yet  the  Bethany  Sunday-school  in  Philadelphia 
every  Sunday  brings  more  children  under  instruction 
than  are  taught  in  all  Genoa  for  a  month,  if  last  Sunday 
was  any  metre.  There  were  about  thirty  in  the 
cathedral,  and  from  forty  to  fifty  more  in  each  of  two 
other  churches  I  visited. 

There  is  something  inexplicable  to  us  in  the  devo- 
tion of  the  Latin  mind.  No  incongruity  of  outward 
circumstances  seems  to  disturb  or  affect  it.  There  is 
no  consciousness  of  sight,  sound,  or  smell  when  once 
the  Italian  drops  down  to  pray.  Things  that  would 
affect  us  as  physically  intolerable,  or  that  we  would 
resent  as  profane  intrusion,  they  do  not  seem  to  be  even 
conscious  of.  Children  play  on  the  floors  and  creep 
around  among  the  groups  of  worshippers,  or  right 
under  the  pulpit,  while  the  priest  is  preaching.  Men 
and  women  come  and  go,  mutter  half-audible  prayers, 
kneel  and  pray  in  all  directions,  facing  the  altar  of 
their  choice;  but  as  long  as  there  is  no  very  loud  noise 
and  intentional  display  of  irreverence,  it  seems  to  dis- 
turb no  one.  We  would  insist  on  better  outward  order 
at  a  political  meeting. 

In  this  beautiful  and  picturesque  city,  where  every 
view  is  a  scene  striking  with  arches  and  terraces  and 
statuary  and  ruined  walls;  where  the  air  is  redolent 
with  the  perfumes  of  almond  and  magnolia  and  orange; 
where  brilliant  flowers  flash  from  half-concealed  gardens 
and  droop  down  from  balconies  and  towers ;  where 
light-hearted  people,  clad  in  the  brightest  of  colors,  go 
singing  all  the  day  long;  where  the  altars  of  the 
churches  are  set  with  stage  effect,  and  in  them  music 
rolls  and  surges  from  morning  to  night ;  where  the 
streets,  crowded  with  priests  and  soldiers  in  contrasting 
uniforms,  with  ragged  muleteers  and  laughing  children, 
present  the  effect  of  a  continuous  carnival,  you  cannot 
for  the  life  of  you  avoid  the  feeling  that  the  whole 
thing  is  a  play,  an  elaborate  and  well-produced  opera, 


284  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

whose  scenic  effects  will  dissolve,  and  whose  music  will 
hush  with  the  near  tinkling  of  the  call-bell  as  the  cur- 
tain drops.  Nevertheless,  these  people  have  been  living 
this  life  for  centuries,  and  their  fathers,  who  were  like 
them,  have  done  some  great  things.  The  Italians  of 
to-day  are  great  grown-up  children.  They  have  the 
happy  carelessness  of  children  and  their  outward  aban- 
don,— their  love  for  the  beautiful,  their  enjoyment  of 
the  moment,  their  unselfish  kindness  and  sympathy. 

It  is  hard  for  us,  perhaps,  to  understand  them  or 
give  them  due  credit  for  what  they  can  do.  With  all 
their  immense  superiority  to  us  in  politeness,  in 
thoughtfulness  and  personal  culture,  they  reveal,  at 
times,  a  practical  side  which,  under  equal  conditions, 
might  prove  them  to  be  our  equals  in  even  that  practi- 
cal development  of  which  we  are  so  proud,  and  which 
exists  with  us  along  with  so  much  of  coarseness  and 
vulgarity.  They  have  an  excellent  and  efficient  army, 
the  result  of  discipline  and  organization.  Their  rail- 
ways are  so  much  better  administered  than  those  of 
France  that  you  feel  the  difference  the  moment  you 
cross  the  border.  I  have  not  often  been  in  a  better- 
managed  or  more  thoroughly  well-ordered  hotel  than 
that  in  which  I  write  to-day,  and  regret  to  leave  to- 
morrow. In  all  these  matters  of  physical  achievement 
they  are  our  equals.  In  the  higher  culture  of  mind 
and  heart,  in  the  thousand  amenities  of  life  which 
make  human  association  pleasant  and  agreeable,  they 
are  immeasurably  our  superiors. 

In  all  their  common  life  they  carry  out  the  desire  to 
please  in  a  wonderful  manner.  The  railway  depot  at 
this  place,  for  instance,  is  not  an  altered  palace,  as  are 
many  public  buildings  here,  but  was  built  by  the  com- 
pany for  its  own  use.  Its  conception,  however,  is  not 
that  of  a  shed  as  is  the  conventional  American  mam- 
moth depot.  It  is  a  noble  hall.  You  sit  in  waiting- 
rooms  twenty-five  feet  high  or  more,  frescoed  and 
panelled  with  excellent  painting,  and  the  front  of  the 


GENOA.  285 

building,  in  the  effect  of  its  rich  carvings  and  marble 
columns,  is  more  imposing  than  the  Academies  of  Music 
and  opera-houses  of  our  large  cities.  It  is,  too,  very 
spacious,  thoroughly  well  arranged  and  adapted  for  its 
special  use.  In  many  of  the  banks  and  buildings  for 
business  offices  you  find  interior  courts  of  most  artistic 
effect,  well  lighted,  warm  with  rich  flowers,  cool  and 
musical  with  sparkling  fountains,  and  elaborate  with 
carving  and  statuary. 

As  it  is  a  gateway  into  Italy,  one  of  the  most  striking 
impressions  of  Genoa  is  the  profusion  of  statuary  and 
carving  which  here  begins  to  meet  yon.  Most  of  the 
old  palaces  have  fine  work  on  tlie  fronts,  and  it  be- 
comes more  elaborate  and  imposing  inside,  where  mag- 
nificent halls  and  massive  stairways,  whose  entrance 
is  very  frequently  a  pair  of  colossal,  crouching  lions, 
lend  from  room  to  room  and  floor  to  floor.  In  the 
streets,  the  very  walls  of  the  common  houses,  particu- 
larly at  the  corners  and  over  the  doorways,  at  odd 
angles  and  in  curious  niches  over  little  shops  you  find 
the  images  of  an  innumerable  army  of  saints,  the  effi- 
gies often  set  up  in  the  fashion  of  a  little  altar. 
Through  the  hotels  and  banks,  and  public  buildings 
of  every  kind,  are  the  statues  of  great  men,  modern 
and  old.  All  this  besides  the  churches  and  parks  and 
cemeteries  and  public  gardens,  which  are  crowded  with 
rare  and  costly  works.  It  is  this  wealth  of  marble, 
pure  and  white,  and  shaped  with  exquisite  art,  that  has 
justly  won  for  this  city  its  well-merited  title,  "Genoa 
la  Superba." 

GENOA. 


286  NORTHERN  ITALY. 


CHAPTER  XXX. 

PISA. 

ENTERING  INTO  TUSCANY — TUSCAN  CIVILIZATION — QUATTBO 
FABBRICHE — THE  Civic  REPUBLICS  —  NATIONAL  BAPTIS- 
TRIES— GROTESQUE  CARVING  AND  FRESCOES — THE  ARTIST'S 
LICENSE  IN  THE  CATHEDRALS — PISA  OF  HISTORY  AND  OF 
TO-DAY. 

AT  Pisa  you  enter  on  the  Tuscan  civilization,  the 
glory  of  modern  Italy, — and  modern  here  means  the 
last  thousand  years,  for  these  Italians  were  learned  and 
accomplished  people  when  our  Saxon  forefathers  were 
rude  savages, — when  England  was  a  forest  filled  with 
warring  tribes,  and  the  Howards  were  "hog-wards." 
It  was  to  Italy  that  Milton  came  for  travel  and  polite 
education  when  his  own  country  was  so  rude  that  it 
was  a  question  whether  to  write  for  it  in  its  own  tongue. 
It  was  from  Italy  that  Shakespeare  borrowed  pJots  and 
thoughts  when  he  would  seek  a  higher  plane  of  civili- 
zation than  Tudor  England  afforded.  In  fact,  until 
within  a  very  brief  time  English  literature  has  regularly 
fed  from  the  crumbs  of  the  table  of  Italy.  It  has  been 
the  school  of  letters,  manners,  and  art  for  the  modern 
world. 

Pisa  is  a  railway  junction  where  five  roads  centre. 
This  is  equivalent  to  about  ten  in  the  United  States, 
and  consequently  the  traveller  need  take  no  thought  of 
how  to  get  there.  He  will  be  coming  to  it  all  the  time, 
and  can  always  have  half  a  day  there  and  will  often 
be  forced  to  stop  over  several  hours.  Happily  the 
railway  restaurant  is  very  good,  carriages  abound  at  a 
franc  or  two  an  hour,  and  the  wonderful  Qnattro  Fab- 
briche  are  very  near.  Time  need  never  hang  heavily 
on  one's  hands,  and  the  beautiful  cathedral,  with  its 


PISA.  287 

close  of  glittering  white  architecture,  looks  handsomer 
every  time  it  is  seen. 

Pisa  itself  is  rather  a  modern-looking  town  com- 
pared with  many  of  Tuscany.  It  has  no  city  gates,  for 
instance,  nor  massive  encircling  walls,  but  lies  open  on 
the  plains,  while  at  Sienna,  Orvieto,  Rome  itself,  and 
many  others  you  enter  through  huge  gates,  with 
ponderous  doors  which  swing  heavily  open  or  shut, 
and  are  in  real  use.  At  Rome  the  gates  remain  open 
until  toward  midnight,  but  in  some  of  the  country 
towns  they  close  at  eight  or  nine  o'clock ;  and  once  shut 
for  the  night  they  never  open  till  morning.  Should 
any  one  linger  without  until  after  this  hour  he  stays  out. 
Fortunately  there  is  little  outside  of  the  walls  of  an  Ital- 
ian town  to  tempt  a  stranger  either  to  ramble  or  linger. 

It  happens  for  the  case  and  instruction  of  tourist  and 
student  tliat  all  that  is  best  in  Pi-a  is  summed  up  in 
the  celebrated  Four  Buildings,  which  are  grouped  in 
one  spot, — a  miniature  quadrilateral  of  architecture, — 
and  which,  taken  together,  ailbrd  an  admirable  intro- 
ductory study  of  Tuscan  art  and  architecture,  as  the} 
are  representative  and  finished  specimens  of  the  style. 

Tlirse  buildings  an»  the  great  Cathedral  of  Pisa,  the 
famous  Loaning  Tower,  which  is  a  detached  tower  of 
exquisite  symmetry,  raised  for  the  purpose  of  swinging 
the  cathedral  bells;  a  hugo.  Baptistry,  and  a  walled 
Holy  Field,  or  cemetery.  All  the  buildings  are  of  pure 
white  marble,  of  faultless  design  and  masterly  finish, 
and  together  constitute  a  group  which  is  without  equal 
in  the  world.  They  illustrate  well,  too,  the  wealth 
which,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  was  lavished  on  church- 
buildings,  and  the  splendor  and  elaborateness  of  their 
establishment.  Of  this  splendid  group,  each  one  of 
which  is  a  masterpiece,  taking  rank  among  the  great 
buildings  of  the  world,  the  Cathedral  is,  of  course,  the 
centre;  all  the  others  are  mere  adjuncts  to  it. 

The  Leaning  Tower,  or  Campanile,  is  simply  a  de- 
tached belfry.  This  was  the  customary  way  of  build- 


288  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

ing  them  in  the  Middle  Ages.  There  are  many  such 
in  Italy,  and  one,  at  least,  is  now  extant  in  England, — 
at  Elstow.  The  Baptistry  is  a  colossal  font  under  its 
own  separate  building.  It  was  a  mediaeval  usage  that 
all  the  baptisms  in  the  Republic  should  take  place,  not 
in  the  several  churches,  but  at  the  Cathedral.  Hence 
arose  rather  a  necessity  for  a  separate  building  for  this 
special  use,  and  very  naturally  an  imposing  provision 
for  the  rite.  Specimens  of  these  national  fonts  remain 
at  Florence  and  Pistoja.  The  Campo  Santo  is  but  a 
graveyard,  but  this  one  is  walled  with  costly  statuary, 
and  the  burial-ground  made  with  numberless  shiploads 
of  earth  brought  from  Jerusalem.  At  Florence  there 
is  the  same  magnificent  equipment  for  the  cathedral 
church  there, — the  Campanile, — a  square  tower,  rank- 
ing as  the  first  of  its  kind  in  the  world. 

And  when  this  wonderful  endowment  of  a  single 
cathedral  is  considered,  it  must  be  remembered,  too, 
that  Pisa  is  a  small  place.  It  has  but  twenty-six  thou- 
sand inhabitants,  and  is  the  centre  of  a  district  of  about 
fifty  thousand  people  only.  Nevertheless,  the  Pisans,  al- 
though a  little,  have  been  a  mighty  people.  They  were 
great  soldiers  and  sailors  in  their  day,  and  their  physical 
energy  was  always  animated  by  the  force  of  education 
and  high  culture.  There  was,  therefore,  little  of  lost 
power  in  their  development,  and  thus  they  carried  their 
arms  into  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  their  name  into 
history.  At  one  time  they  dominated  Italy,  and  through 
it  the  world,  displaying  military  and  executive  genius 
of  the  highest  kind.  The  Bonaparte  family  was  of 
Tuscan  descent,  and  although  Napoleon  came  on  the 
field  when  the  glory  of  Pisa  was  but  tradition,  he 
seems  to  have  only  gathered  up  and  renewed  in  himself 
what  was  once  a  common  inheritance  of  Tuscan  blood. 

It  is  no  wonder,  therefore,  that  the  Pisans  are  proud 
of  their  city  and  its  history.  Indeed,  Italian  history, 
up  to  to-day,  is  but  the  record  of  a  brilliant  constella- 
tion of  civic  republics.  There  has  never  been  a  na- 


PISA.  289 

tional  growth.  Its  life  has  been  municipal,  and  there- 
fore limited.  This  spirit  exists  yet.  The  Pisan,  the 
Genoese,  the  Venetian,  the  Milanese  look  on  each  other 
as  foreigners.  They  have  been  fighting  with  each 
other  for  a  thousand  years,  and  Italian  unity  to-day  is, 
therefore,  a  conception  rather  than  a  growth.  The 
Pisau's  instinctive  allegiance  is  to  Pisa,  the  Genoese  to 
Genoa,  just  as  with  us  the  Virginian's  first  impulse  is 
to  Virginia,  the  Carolinian's  to  Carolina.  The  greater 
idea  of  a  nation  is  yet  to  come.  Moreover,  our  State 
rights  doctrine  is  but  the  fruit  of  a  hundred  years  of 
rude,  provincial  existence.  The  city  independence  and 
individuality  of  Italy  is  the  growth  of  a  thousand  years 
of  culture,  power,  and  glorious  tradition.  We  must 
recognixe  this  historic  fact  when  we  would  appreciate 
properly  the  wonderful  political  ability  which  has  brought 
about  the  unification  of  Italy  and  made  it  a  nation. 

The  Pisa  of  to-day  sleeps  in  rest  and  beauty  after 
the  toil  and  achievement  of  centuries.  A  summer's 
sunlight  floods  the  town,  and  the  calm  of  the  clear 
Arno  spreads  from  street  to  street.  The  quiet  of  a 
New  England  Sunday  broods  over  the  place,  and  the 
picturesque  inhabitants,  poor  but  robed  with  a  Tuscan 
wealth  of  color,  hardly  seem  to  move.  They  stand 
around  like  artistically-grouped  figures  in  tableaux. 
Indeed,  the  worship  of  the  tortoise  seems  to  have  pre- 
vailed at  Pisa  at  some  time.  On  the  bronze  doors  of 
this  church,  rich  in  rare  and  costly  work,  the  tortoise 
figures  again  and  again,  the  legend,  " tardo  sed  into" 
engraven  over  his  elaborately- recorded  exploits.  It  is 
hard  always  to  trace  in  their  time-stained  and  quaint 
figures  the  incidents  of  the  long  story,  but  the  bottom 
of  a  door  generally  winds  up  with  a  complacent,  self- 
satisfied  tortoise,  sitting  or  sleeping  calmly  some  paces 
in  advance  of  a  very  demoralized  and  apologetic-look- 
ing stag.  In  the  shop- windows,  too,  all  over  the  town 
are  alabaster  and  marble  figures  of  the  contented  deity. 
What  the  legend  may  be  I  do  not  know,  but  the  moral 
N  t  25 


290  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

has  worked  its  way  into  the  life  of  Pisa.  The  worship 
has  had  fruition,  and  the  Pisan  of  to-day  has  been 
absorbed  into  the  soul  of  his  divinity. 

On  entering  Italy  one  immediately  begins  to  come 
on  traces  of  that  singular  marriage  of  impiety  and 
religion  which  so  strongly  characterizes  the  Middle 
Ages.  A  traveller  tells  of  finding  in  an  old  shop  a 
solid  carved  crucifix  of  costly  work  and  worn  and 
stained  by  long  use.  On  touching  a  concealed  spring 
there  shot  out  from  the  long  arm  of  the  cross  a  mur- 
derous knife.  It  is  mediaBval  Italy  all  over.  It  was 
in  this  town  of  Pisa,  I  think,  that  a  verger,  unlocking 
the  chancel -railings,  took  me  to  the  rear  of  the  great 
altar  and  showed  a  nude  Eve,  of  life-size,  tempted  by 
the  serpent.  The  picture  was  a  fine  painting,  but  so 
impure  and  suggestive  that  it  was  considerately  kept 
covered  where  only  priests  could  study  it. 

This  shameless  profanation  of  the  churches,  which  is 
not  uncommon,  seems  to  have  been,  in  part,  owing  to  a 
singular  license  enjoyed  by  the  builders  and  artists,  who 
were  allowed  to  carve  or  paint  almost  anything  they 
pleased,  and  who  used  this  freedom  to  its  widest  stretch. 
Often  their  work  took  the  form  of  satire,  often  it  is 
merely  grotesque  and  vulgar.  Sometimes  the  entire 
meaning  is  lost  for  us.  On  a  famous  church  door  at 
Verona  there  is  carved  a  figure  of  a  pig  clad  in  priestly 
canonicals  and  reading  out  of  a  breviary.  In  the  judg- 
ment-hall at  Pistoja,  facing  the  seat  of  the  judges,  there 
is  a  fox  robed  in  the  judicial  ermine.  Much  of  this 
satire  is  coarse  in  the  extreme,  even  to  obscenity,  but, 
after  reading  the  literary  efforts  in  this  direction  of  Eras- 
mus, who  was  a  polished  and  cultivated  man  of  his 
time,  one  need  not  be  surprised  at  anything  from 
unknown  and  nameless  lampooners. 

What  is  stranger  to  our  sense  is  the  use  of  the  cathe- 
dral for  such  purposes.  It  was,  evidently,  the  Punch 
or  Puck  of  those  ages,  where,  among  saints  and  angels 
and  by  noble  tombs,  the  comic  artists  of  the  day  carved 


PISA.  291 

their  satire,  their  censure,  and  their  fun ;  and  all  uf  it 
very  rough  to  our  gentler  life.  That  there  were  some 
limits  to  this  strange  license  is  seen  in  the  fact  that 
these  odd  extravagances  are  generally  partly  hidden, 
being,  as  a  rule,  found  in  dark  recesses  or  under  the 
capitals  of  columns,  or  only  traceable  with  difficulty  in 
the  secondary  lines  of  frescos,  and  not  visible  at  all, 
perhaps,  to  the  careless  observer.  A  favorite  field  for 
these  grotesque  carvings  is  under  the  carved  scats  of 
the  stalls  in  the  choir. 

Although  sleeping  in  a  century  that  has  no  more 
meaning  for  it,  Pisa  itself,  outside  of  its  marble  wonders, 
is  a  place  full  of  quiet  beauty  and  picturesque  attraction 
for  the  American  stranger.  Here,  travelling  from  the 
North,  he,  probably  for  the  first  time,  comes  on  a  town 
where  all  society  is  strictly  classed,  and  the  classi- 
lieation  emphasized  by  uniforms  on  the  street.  The 
women  are  all  dark  and  beautiful  in  their  black  lac-c 
and  veils.  The  priests  are  those  of  Northern  Italy, 
intellectual  in  their  countenances  and  looking  clean 
and  gentlemanly  in  their  black-silk  stockings  and 
silver  shoebuckles, — alas,  how  different  from  their 
Southern  brothers!  The  gentlemen  wear  cloaks  in 
brigand  fashion.  The  laboring-men  are  picturesque 
in  clean  blue  blouses,  and  their  wives  in  all  the  bright, 
colors  of  the  rainbow.  Then  comes  the  army,  the 
handsome  infantry-officers  in  soft  blue  and  white,  and 
the  swaggering  bermylieri  (sharpshooters)  in  their 
rolling  bandit  hats  and  plumes  of  black-cock  feathers. 

In  the  great  cathedral  at  Pisa  hangs  a  massive  bronze 
lamp — a  group  of  four  figures  suspended  at  a  vast 
distance  from  the  ceiling — which,  tradition  says,  gave 
Galileo  the  hint  of  the  pendulum.  It  is  not  an  eccle- 
siastical relic,  but  is  a  shrine  of  a  good  deal  of  interest, 
My  guide  told  me,  with  only  half-repressed  irritation, 
that  the  English  people  always  asked  after  it,  and  he 
seemed  to  regard  this  conduct  as  an  eccentricity  hardly 
excusable,  even  in  the  barbarian  forestieri.  I  think  he 


292  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

knew  the  whole  history  of  GaJileo,  and  considered  him 
yet  a  dangerous  man.  But,  in  spite  of  his  qualms  of 
conscience,  he  had  learned  that  not  an  altar  in  all  the 
cathedral  was  so  prolific  of  barbarian  fees.  So  he  took 
the  heretic  silver,  and  balanced  his  account  with  an 
extra  prayer  or  two. 

The  corridors  of  grand  pillars  in  this  splendid  house 
of  God  are  trophies  of  war  brought  away  by  the  Pisans 
in  their  conquests  in  many  lands  when  Pisa  was  mis- 
tress of  the  seas  and  her  ships  brought  tribute  from 
almost  every  foreign  shore.  The  cathedral  itself  is  a 
monument  in  honor  of  a  great  naval  victory  had  near 
Palermo,  and  most  of  the  churches  commemorate 
triumph  by  sea  or  land  against  Turk  or  rival  Italian 
cities.  The  idea  of  building  a  church  as  the  monument 
of  a  field  of  blood  is  something  that  has  passed  out  of 
our  American  civilization.  We  could  hardly  consecrate 
a  cathedral  of  Gettysburg  or  a  church  of  the  Holy 
Field  of  Shiloh,  or  dedicate  an  altar  to  Our  Lady  of 
Stone  Rwer,  but  all  Europe  is  full  of  just  such  monu- 
ments. And  they  could  build  their  temples  with  pil- 
laged columns  and  marbles,  adorn  them  with  plundered 
statues,  and,  if  need  be,  sanctify  the  altar  with  the 
stolen  body  of  an  apostle. 


SIENA.  293 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 

SIENA. 

AN  ENCHANTED  TOWN  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES— A  LIVING 
TOMB  OF  THE  PAST— THE  FOURTEENTH  CENTURY  IN  THK 
NINETEENTH — A  MEDIAEVAL  SURVIVAL  —  SIENA'S  GRAND 
CATHEDRAL — A  BROAD-CHURCH  TEMPLE — THE  VANISHED 
SIBYLS  SLEEPING  WITH  THE  SAINTS — SOCRATES  AND  HKKM  i:s 
ENSHRINED  IN  A  CHRISTIAN  PANTHEON— THE  GOLDEN  AGE 
OF  TUSCANY— THE  LOST  REPUBLICS  OF  ITALY— AND  WK 
Too? 

ALL  through  the  interior  of  Italy  there  are  interest- 
ing cities — towns  of  from  fifteen  thousand  to  forty 
thousand  inhabitants — which  are  more  striking  in 
their  general  effect  than  Rome,  or  Genoa,  or  Naples,  or 
Milan,  or  any  of  the  cities  of  travel,  and  more  really 
instructive  in  the  way  of  picturing  vividly  the  mediaeval 
life  of  Europe.  These  town?  have  been  kept  unspotted 
from  the  world.  The  eager  Currents  of  modern  life 
have  never  poured  through  them,  and  they  stand  the 
spared  monuments  of  ages  gone  by. 

Of  all  this  group  of  quaint  towns,  there  is  none  more 
curious  or  picturesquely  representative  than  Siena, — a 
name  which  is  to  many,  perhaps,  only  a  vague  recol- 
lection, the  faint  memory  of  a  footnote  in  some  history 
of  art  or  dictionary  of  dates.  Nevertheless,  it  was  once 
a  grand  factor  in  European  history, — a  centre  of  art 
and  civil  freedom  which  died  out  together;  then  a 
theatre  of  fierce  passions,  intestinal  wars,  tragedies, 
tyrannies,  and  endless  and  bloody  revolutions;  then 
the  lifeless  quiet  of  exhaustion. 

As  the  modern  railway  carries  you  out  of  the  dreary 
sepulchre  of  the  Roman  Campagna,  and  into  the  gar- 
landed and  smiling  fields  of  Tuscany,  that  pleasing 
land  flowing  with  oil  and  wine,  you  see  afar  off  what 

25* 


294  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

seems  to  be  a  huge  fortress,  throwing  out  its  battle- 
mented  turrets  sharply  against  the  sky.  As  you  draw 
nearer  the  heavy  walls  lengthen  and  broaden  and 
divide  into  the  lines  of  a  town.  It  is  Siena, — a  solid 
mass  of  masonry  set  on  the  steep,  sharp  crest  of  a  hill 
bristling  with  bastions  and  frowning  towers.  Nearly 
all  of  the  mediaeval  towns  are  so  placed.  They  were 
simply  fortified  camps,  and  in  times  when  warfare  was 
carried  on  by  hand-weapons  the  natural  site  of  a  fixed 
camp  was  the  highest  hilltop  in  the  neighborhood. 
From  that  point  it  commanded  all  the  country  in  sight. 
This  was  the  origin  of  the  castle, — cctstellum  meaning, 
etymologically,  a  little  camp, — and  in  time,  by  the  law 
of  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  the  best-located  castle  be- 
came the  city. 

As  a  consequence  of  this  hilltop  location,  the  rail- 
ways in  Central  Italy  usually  do  not  go  into  any  town, 
the  grades  being  simply  impossible,  but  land  you  at  a 
depot  bearing  the  town  name,  and  sometimes  some  four 
miles  away  from  it.  The  hill  itself  is  often  shaved 
down  on  all  sides,  so  that  its  native  rock  may  form  not 
only  the  foundation,  but  part  of  the  outer  walls,  of  the 
town  which  crowns  its  crest.  The  smooth  face  of  this 
wall  may  thus  be  one  hundred  feet  in  perpendicular 
height,  and  one  often  cannot  tell  what  part  is  built 
masonry  and  what  part  natural  rock. 

In  the  case  of  Siena  it  is  a  little  better.  The  train, 
by  a  powerful  effort,  backs  up  a  zigzag  something  like 
the  celebrated  approach  to  the  great  St.  Louis  bridge 
in  our  country,  and  lands  you  within  a  mile  of  the 
town. 

At  this  outside  depot  you  are  received  in  state.  The 
daily  ceremony  of  going  to  this  station,  by  which  Siena 
touches  the  outer  world,  is,  I  think,  a  solemn  form  ob- 
served with  religious  care.  I  was  the  only  hotel  pas- 
senger on  the  express  train,  and  I  am  inclined  to  think 
the  arrivals  of  that  day  were  a  little  above  the  average. 
Two  four-horse  vehicles,  stately  and  black,  were  drawn 


SIENA,  295 

up  in  line  at  the  gate  of  the  yard.  The  f ,  rce  of  guards 
and  porters  and  station-men  were  far  more  rigid  in 
their  demeanor  and  less  cheerful  in  their  manner  and 
movements  than  a  body  of  average  Italian  priests  and 
ecclesiastics  officiating  at  mass.  When  .1  approached 
the  gold-laced  and  uniformed  official  in  charge  of  one 
of  the  funereal  wagons,  handed  him  my  baggage  receipts, 
and  told  him  I  was  going  to  honor  "The  Grand  Hotel 
of  the  Royal  Black  Eagle"  with  my  presence,  he 
seemed  staggered  and  stunned  at  the  unwonted  sound, 
and  by  the  magnitude  of  the  responsibility  so  suddenly 
cast  upon  him.  Recovering  from  the  shock,  however, 
he  very  soon  directed  some  one  else,  who  in  turn  ordered 
still  another,  to  go  and  get  my  trunks,  and  in  due  time 
everything  was  accomplished  decently  and  in  order.  I 
entered  my  hearse-like  carriage  of  state,  the  empty  om- 
nibus drove  off  slowly  in  silence  and  dignity,  three 
officials  mounted  my  wagon,  the  procession  moved  de- 
corously up  the  hill  towards  the  town,  the  gates  of  the 
train-yard  were  softly  closed,  the  station-men  sank 
back  in  repose,  and  the  quiet  of  a  Sabbath  fell  upon 
the  Siena  depot. 

About  half  a  mile  up  you  enter  the  walls  of  the 
town,  and  as  the  great  iron  gates  close  behind  you  this 
world  is  shut  out, — the  nineteenth  century,  the  life 
that  you  know.  You  are  shut  in  with  the  fourteenth 
century.  You  feel  an  unknown  sensation  in  which  the 
whole  life  of  the  mediaeval  times  envelops  you, — takes 
possession  of  you.  You  arc  in  an  unburied  Pompeii  of 
the  Middle  Ages. 

It  is,  indeed,  a  most  singular  and  wonderful  study. 
Here  is  a  massive  city,  full  of  stately  palaces,  grand 
churches,  softly-splashing  fountains,  spacious  squares 
paved  with  fine  stones  and  ornamented  with  beautiful 
columns,  its  streets  thronged  with  people, — children  are 
at  play,  men  move  in  their  shops,  soldiers  stand  guard 
before  the  palaces,  priests  silently  steal  along  the  wrays, 
— but  the  city  is  dead,  absolutely  dead,  to  all  that  we 


296  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

call  life  and  to  all  that  we  know.  It  has,  so  far  as  we 
can  see,  no  meaning  or  place  in  this  world  now.  It 
exists — these  people  live  and  move  and  have  their  daily 
being — solely  by  the  impulse  of  a  force  originally  pro- 
jected in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  which,  never  renewed, 
is  lessening  every  day. 

Siena  is  a  segment  of  the  Middle  Ages  projected  into 
the  nineteenth  century,  and  held  there  like  a  fly  in 
amber.  Let  us  look  a  little  more  closely  at  the  wonder- 
ful picture.  Siena  is  to-day  an  inland  town  of  some 
twenty-three  thousand  or  twenty-five  thousand  inhabi- 
tants,— about  the  size  of  Lancaster,  in  Pennsylvania. 
Hundreds  of  years  ago  it  had  a  population  of  over  one 
hundred  thousand  souls, — busy  men  of  action,  soldiers  at 
a  time  when  arms  was  the  great  profession,  artists  of  first 
fame  in  the  world,  learned  priests  and  scholars,  powerful 
citizens,  merchants  trading  over  all  the  seas,  architects, 
builders,  workers  of  every  kind.  These  people  built 
their  city  and  their  houses  for  defence  and  for  eternity, 
with  walls  from  three  to  twenty  feet  thick,  and  they 
are  all  there  yet.  Consequently,  the  Sienese  of  to-day 
live  in  castles  and  palaces  almost  for  nothing,  and  the 
town  remains  a  perfect  mediaeval  picture.  It  is  more 
than  a  picture  :  it  is  a  survival. 

Once  inside  of  Siena,  closed  in  its  narrow  streets 
paved  with  smooth,  flat  stones  joined  as  regularly  as 
the  masonry  of  the  walls  that  rise  up  abruptly  almost 
within  arm's-length  on  each  side  of  you,  one  never  sees 
the  green  fields  or  the  sky,  except  as  a  thin  line  of  blue 
or  soft  gray  directly  overhead.  In  the  night-time  there 
is  seen  likewise  only  a  segment  of  the  stars.  It  is  a 
gloomy,  sombre  city  of  heavy  shadows  and  cool,  moist 
atmosphere, — an  atmosphere  that  breathes  forever  over 
stone  and  cold  marble.  You  see  no  woodwork  in  the 
streets,  save,  perhaps,  an  occasional  ponderous  door, — 
a  modern  injection  and  anachronism.  The  palaces  join 
each  other  and  face  on  the  narrow,  irregular  streets  in 
long  lines  as  do  our  houses,  but  every  house  is  a  fort- 


SIENA.  297 

ress,  built  of  massive  masonry, — sometimes  buttressed, 
— its  walls  capable  of  resisting  cannon.  The  great 
stones  are  firmly  set  one  on  and  in  another  till  the 
whole  looks  like  a  natural  rock.  Solid  stone  benches 
often  stand  along  the  front  of  the  house  in  the  street- 
way.  There  are  no  windows,  but  only  apertures  cov- 
ered with  immense  wrought-iron  grates,  and  these  are 
very  sparing.  To  the  side  of  each  window  and  door 
on  the  lower  floor  are  fastened  huge  iron  spikes,  from 
each  one  of  which  hangs  a  great  ring,  also  of  tough 
wrought-iron.  Intelligent  Italians  of  this  day  could 
not  tell  me  the  ancient  use  of  these  fastenings,  and  for 
a  time  they  were  mysterious  puzzles.  History  seems 
to  show  that  they  were  used  to  stretch  great  chains 
across  the  street  in  times  of  fighting. 

It  is  impossible  to  describe  the  monumental  appear- 
ance of  old  Siena,  or  how  these  ponderous,  castellated 
dwellings  call  up  the  life  and  legend  of  mediaeval  time. 
These  houses  have  seen  tragedies  within  and  troubles 
without.  Men  have  scaled  and  stormed  them ;  men 
have  been  flung  dead  and  living  from  their  frowning 
windows ;  seditions,  revolutions,  and  riots  have  streamed 
around  their  base.  But  through  all  changes,  conspira- 
cies, revolts,  plunder,  confiscation,  barbarous  revenges, 
depopulation,  crime,  and  fierce  passions  within,  lawless- 
ness and  violence  without,  their  great  walls,  gigantic, 
gloomy,  severe,  have  stood  passionless  and  impartial, 
like  the  gods  of  the  classic  pagans.  Every  stone  seems 
to  tell  of  the  frightful  tragedies,  the  play  of  ungovern- 
able passion,  the  wild  license,  the  desperation  of  hu- 
manity, in  the  dense  darkness  of  the  night  of  supersti- 
tion, which  make  even  the  reading  of  medieval  history 
so  stifling  and  oppressive. 

Siena  seems  to  have  been  forgotten  of  history,  and 
allowed  to  stand  untouched  in  the  stream  of  time  as  its 
currents  washed  out  almost  all  over  Europe  the  traces 
of  the  worn-out  feudal  life  of  the  Continent.  Until 
within  a  few  years  no  railway  came  near  it.  The  lines 


298  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

of  trade  had  changed,  and  it  was  left  out  of  the  world 
of  commerce  and  human  relations.  A  new  art,  a  new 
religion,  a  new  system  of  government,  had  come  up,  and 
the  world  knew  it  no  more.  It  had  nothing  to  give, 
and  dropped  out  of  human  care  or  thought.  It  was  a 
two  days'  journey  by  horse  or  carriage,  through  an  un- 
defended country,  and  men  did  not  come  near  it.  So 
it  remained  unchanged.  Even  now  its  isolation  is 
curiously  strange.  It  has  lived  so  long  out  of  the 
world  that  with  a  railway  at  its  door  it  cannot  come  in. 
It  has  no  sympathies  with  our  modern  life,  and  our 
blood  will  not  flow  into  its  corpse.  There  are  but  two 
great  hotels, — that  is,  hotels  for  the  use  of  strangers. 
I  was  the  first  guest  for  a  week  at  mine.  I  came  alone, 
ate  alone,  sat  alone  in  the  empty  chambers,  went  away 
alone.  At  Rome  I  had  unfortunately  left  my  Baede- 
ker, covering  Central  Italy,  and  was  entirely  without 
any  detailed  information  as  to  the  history  of  the  place 
or  local  points  of  interest,  only  knowing  of  its  great 
cathedral  and  its  importance  as  an  early  school  of  art. 
I  went  out  to  buy  anything  that  would  help  me 
through,  either  one  of  the  standard  guide-books  or  any 
local  publication,  but  I  could  not  find  even  a  book-store. 
I  have  reason  to  believe  from  what  I  have  learned  since 
that  there  is  now  such  a  store  in  the  place,  but  it  is  cer- 
tainly not  conspicuous.  All  along  the  rather  brilliant 
shops  of  the  Corso  or  main  street  I  searched  for  it  in 
vain,  and  had  to  come  away  as  poor  as  I.  entered. 
Again,  in  the  stone-covered  porch  of  the  side  entrance 
to  the  grand  cathedral  there  were  posted  on  the  church 
walls,  as  is  the  custom  in  Italy,  public  notices, — some 
civil,  some  ecclesiastical.  There  were  in  all  but  some 
six  or  eight  on  the  wall,  and  one  of  them  was  dated 
as  far  back  as  1870.  Only  one,  I  think,  bore  date  of 
this  year.  Time  has  no  more  any  meaning  to  Siena ;  a 
day  is  as  a  hundred  years. 

It  is  the  cathedral  which  the  travellers  that  find  Siena 


SIENA.  299 

corne  to  see,  and  it  is  one  of  the  great  churches  of 
Europe,  whether  you  view  it  in  itselt'  or  in  its  relation 
to  the  history  and  development  of  art.  This  noble 
edifice  was  built  in  the  thirteenth  century,  in  the  early 
Italian-Gothic  style,  in  many  respects  the  most  effective 
order  of  church  architecture.  It  made  on  me  a  much 
stronger  and  more  pleasing  impression  as  a  church  than 
St.  Peter's,  which  has  something  of  a  polytheistic  char- 
acter,— a  pantheon  for  the  modern  mythology  of  Rome, 
— orthun  the  handsome  ball-room  effect,  inside  and  out, 
of  the  graceful  Madeleine  at  Paris. 

In  this  remarkable  church,  which  exists  now  just  as 
it  did  five  hundred  years  ago,  whichever  way  you  look, 
long  aisles  of  Gothic  arched  columns  stretch  away  like 
the  trees  of  the  forest.  Under  them  kneeling  groups 
cluster,  or  entering  worshippers  move  noiselessly  for- 
ward like  ants.  So  great  is  the  grand  nave,  so  wide 
the  dark  aisles,  so  high  the  fretted  ceiling,  that  you  do 
not  hear  the  feet  of  rude  men  and  wooden-shod  peasant 
women  as  they  tramp  the  marble  floor.  The  noble 
dead  of  mediaeval  ages  sleep  in  their  stone  coffins  about 
you  in  peaceful  and  eternal  rest.  The  organ  rolls,  the 
clouds  of  incense  float  upward,  and  by  their  tombs  the 
same  rhythmic  prayers  ascend  that  these  men  heard 
here  in  their  lifetimes.  All  around  in  niches  and 
chapels  stand  fine  statues,  not  the  morbid  and  ascetic 
work  of  a  later  period,  but  after  the  more  human  fash- 
ion of  the  antique,  rejoicing  in  the  beauty  and  loveliness 
of  the  human  figure.  In  front,  against  a  dark  back- 
ground of  ancient,  rich  wood-carving  panelling  the 
walls  and  covering  the  stalls  of  the  choir,  stands  out 
the  great  main  altar,  splendid  in  its  mass  of  silver  and 
its  hundred  lights,  glittering  with  jewels  and  gleaming 
crosses,  and  the  gold-worked  robes  of  the  priests,  and 
you  think  of  Jupiter  come  down  to  see  Danse.  The 
time  has?  passed  when  religion  can  be  taught  or  en- 
forced by  dramatic  effects.  The  aesthetic  fable  of  classic 
legend,  and  the  lower  theatrical  splendors  of  the 


300  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

mediaeval  altar,  have  both  had  their  day, — have  both 
served,  perhaps,  a  useful  purpose,  and  are  both  equally 
useless  for  good  in  this  day  and  generation. 

In  this  old  cathedral,  where  every  quaint  corner  is  a 
study,  there  is  one  very  curious  and  striking  feature 
of  rare  historical  interest.  We  all  know  that  in  the 
earlier  history  of  the  Christian  Church  there  was  a 
peculiar  veneration  and  honor  for  the  pagan  sibyls. 
They  were  held  in  great  esteem,  and  perhaps  some- 
thing more;  but  just  what  were  the  honors  paid  them, 
or  how  far  the  respect  verged  on  something  higher,  is 
not  clear.  A  great  saint,  in  a  great  hymn  yet  used  in 
the  burial-service  of  the  Catholic  Church,  did  not 
scruple  to  write, — 

"  Testo  David  cum  Sibylla," 

Did  they  rank  with  the  prophets  ?  Were  they  a 
little  lower  than  the  angels  ? 

Here  they  are  all  in  the  great  cathedral  of  Siena 
with  the  saints  and  martyrs,  and  their  presentation  is 
on  such  a  large  scale  as  to  make  them  one  of  the  dis- 
tinguishing features  of  the  church.  On  the  broad 
pavement  of  the  two  great  aisles  which  flank  the  nave 
I  found  them  all  in  colossal  form.  Their  representa- 
tion is  in  fine  and  almost  imperishable  etching, — the 
etching  done  in  white  stone,  inlaid  in  a  surface  of  black 
marble.  The  designs  are  spirited,  free,  and  strong,  and 
the  general  effect  very  impressive.  The  sibyls  them- 
selves— ten  or  twelve  in  number,  as  I  remember — are 
all  fine,  large,  comely  women,  most  of  them  apparently 
about  thirty-five,  of  full  form  and  rounded  contour. 
The  figures  are  colossal, — about  four  times  human  size. 
Each  sibyl  has  a  brief  legend  in  old  script  set  in  the 
black  ground,  giving  her  shadowy  credentials ;  some- 
times it  is  a  sentence  from  an  old  classic,  sometimes  a 
monkish  rescript,  reciting  the  substance  of  her  prophecy 
or  foreshadowing.  I  much  regret  that  I  did  not  copy 


SIENA.  301 

these.  Often  they  ran  about  thus :  "  The  [Thracian] 
sibyl  concerning;  whom  [EpaminondasJ  wrote."  And 
that  is  about  all  we  know  of  most  of  them.  There 
they  live  in  marble,  the  dead  goddesses  of  two  religions, 
and  men  have  to-day  only  the  faintest  and  most  elusive 
traces  of  their  being. 

The  spirit  of  that  easy-going  catholicity  of  classic 
Rome  which  accepted  and  assimilated  the  gods  of  all 
people  lingered  long  in  Italy.  In  the  goodly  fellow- 
ship of  this  impressive  temple  are  Moses  and  Samson 
and  Socrates,  Solomon  and  Judas  Maccabaeus,  and  on 
the  pavement  near  the  door,  Hermes  Trismegistos, — 
that  mythical  personage  whose  name  carries  one  far 
back  into  the  shadows  of  the  morning  aeons.  Hermes 
— Mercury — Thoth — the  Logos  of  Egyptian  tradition. 

In  fact,  this  grand  old  cathedral,  out  of  the  world 
now,  sleeping  in  the  cool  shades  of  history,  is  the  most 
hospitable  pantheon  I  have  ever  seen.  It  is  a  broad- 
church  temple  of  mediaeval  faith,  whose  doors  opened 
wider  and  more  freely  than  anything  in  Anglican 
England  to-day.  There  are  no  national  limitations 
to  its  honors,  and  it  has  leaped  the  bounds  of  any  one 
religion.  The  gods  and  the  heroes,  the  popes  and  the 
philosophers,  the  saints  and  the  martyrs  and  the  leaders, 
of  many  times  and  many  people  are  gathered  here ; 
and  they  rest  among  civic  crests  and  municipal  standards 
and  flagstaffs  and  crucifixes  carried  'in  battle  by  the 
victorious  Sienese  six  hundred  years  a:_!.<». 

If  possible,  a  visit  to  this  place  should  cover  the 
sixth  day  of  May,  which  is  the  festa  of  the  great  St. 
Catharine  of  Siena,  when  her  head  is  exposed  for  the 
edification  of  the  faithful,  and  the  whole  scene  affords 
an  excellent  "  interior"  of  Italian  life  which  it  is  getting 
harder  to  see  every  year.  St.  Catharine  is  one  of  the  larger 
luminaries  of  the  Roman  mythology  and  the  djvinity 
of  Siena,  remembered  here  and  throughout  the  Church 
after  the  popes  and  the  princes  of  Sienese  splendor 
have  been  long  forgotten.  She  is  one  of  the  represen- 

26 


302  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

tative  saints  of  Europe,  and  her  curious  story  one  of 
the  best  illustrative  studies  of  mediaeval  society  and  the 
mediaeval  Church.  And  nowhere  can  it  be  studied  to 
more  advantage  than  in  its  natural  setting,  this  quaint 
old  town. 

Historically  for  the  student,  politically  for  the 
thoughtful  American  citizen,  Siena  is  a  point  of  instruc- 
tive study,  its  rise  and  fall  a  lesson  pregnant  with 
interest.  Hundreds  of  years  ago,  before  the  present 
states  and  governments  of  Europe  were,  it  was  a  centre 
of  learning,  art,  and  civilization, — and  it  was  a  republic ! 
From  the  eleventh  to  the  thirteenth  centuries  Pisa  and 
Siena  were  the  brightest  stars  in  that  brilliant  historical 
constellation — the  lost  Republics  of  Italy. 

At  that  time  they  were  the  centre  of  a  wonderful 
revival  of  art,  the  seats  of  a  school  of  painting  and 
sculpture,  and  particularly  architecture,  of  fine  charac- 
teristics and  great  promise,  whose  sudden  appearance 
and  equally  sudden  and  complete  disappearance  have 
never  been  yet  philosophically  explained.  It  is  one  of 
the  vexed  problems  of  history.  This  period  has  been 
felicitously  called  "  the  Renaissance  before  the  Renais- 
sance." We  know  little  of  this  interesting  time,  and 
cannot  trust  that,  for  it  has  been  written  by  priests  and 
monkish  chroniclers  who  came  into  power  over  its 
ruins.  This  we  do  know, — that  these  little  republics 
threw  the  morning  rays  of  art  and  learning  and  pros- 
perity and  modern  civilization  over  Europe.  Men 
built  great  cities,  carved  grand  sculptures  of  force  and 
originality,  painted  great  paintings,  traded  with  distant 
lands,  grew  rich  and  powerful,  and  governed  them- 
selves. There  was  freedom  and  glory  and  prosperity, 
but  weakness  somewhere,  for  in  a  brief  time  the  priest 
took  the  place  of  the  statesman,  and  night  fell  upon 
Europe.  Then  came  the  lethargic  stupor  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  unbroken  until  the  Reformation  and  the  Renais- 
sance. 


SIENA.  303 

This  strange  episode  of  tin's  time  is  a  social  and 
political  tragedy, — a  catastrophe  in  the  evolution  of 
human  advancement. 

There  is  one  record  which  remains  to  tell  of  the  life 
of  this  fated  people, — its  architecture.  That,  fortu- 
nately, is  impartial,  accurate,  and  unimpeachable,  for 
it  is  itself  the  product  and  result  of  the  national  life, 
and  it  cannot  be  altered  or  tampered  with.  It  is  here 
that  the  cathedral  of  Siena  becomes  of  historic  value, 
as  well  as  that  of  Orvieto  and  the  wonderful  group  of 
bui Mings  at  Pisa,  of  which  I  have  before  written. 
The  Pisa  of  to-day  sleeps  and  is  meaningless,  but  on 
its  confines,  in  the  little  field  which  holds  the  famed 
cathedral,  baptistery,  campanile  (Leaning  Tower),  and 
Campo  Santo,  the  Pisa  of  history  still  lives  in  beauty 
and  speaks  with  eloquence. 

The  architecture  and  sculpture  of  this  time,  as  it 
comes  down  to  us,  has  a  positive  and  distinctive  clnr- 
acter.  It  is  instinct  with  life,  and  freshness,  and  youth. 
Its  material,  pure  white  marble  relievos,  or  the  outlines 
emphasized  sometimes  in  black,  gives  the  work  a  pecu- 
liar delicacy  and  attraction,  and  not  onlv  admits  but 
seems  to  demand  the  graceful  ornamentation  and  rich- 
ness of  finish  which  characterize  the  buildings  of  this 
period.  They  abound  in  airy  colonnades,  superim- 
posed, one  row  on  another,  in  ranges  of  arches  and 
arcades  often  raised  into  the  air  in  light  and  graceful 
columns  multiplied  and  repeated  and  rejoicing  in  charm- 
ing Corinthian  capitals  and  an  affluence  of  leaves  and 
flowers.  The  fl^ades  of  some  of  these  churches  are  a 
wondrous  mass  of  elegant  figures,  covering  the  whole 
front  like  a  delicate  veil  of  marble  lace- work.  In  all 
this  exuberance  and  wealth  of  ornament  there  is,  of 
course,  occasional  crudity  and  immaturity,  as  there 
always  must  be  in  everything  which  has  yet  the  power 
to  grow,  but  you  lose  it  all  in  the  feeling  of  life  and 
joyousness  and  freedom.  The  people  who  developed 
this  style  of  architecture  were  in  the  youth  of  their 


304  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

political  state,  strong,  active,  buoyant,  and  full  of  the 
conscious  pleasure  of  life  and  the  sense  of  progress. 
There  was  freedom  of  individual  action  and  civil  liberty. 

They  had  a  pleasure  in  the  life  and  strength  of  the 
human  body ;  they  delighted  in  depicting  the  beauty 
and  symmetry  of  its  form.  Their  art  was  the  child  of 
Greece  as  well  as  of  the  hardy  Gothic  North,  and  there 
is  often  a  curious  simplicity  in  the  mixture  of  classic 
and  Christian  legend  in  their  sculpture.  Their  churches 
are  bright  with  statuary  fashioned  after  the  antique, 
light  and  graceful  with  an  architecture  of  delicate  lines 
and  tracery  that  seem  to  float  and  carry  up  the  build- 
ings into  the  air.  They  are  lavishly  dowered  with 
ornament.  All  that  is  beautiful  in  art,  all  the  treasures 
of  wealth,  have  been  poured  into  them  without  stint  or 
measure, — lovely  statues,  precious  stones,  rare  paintings, 
curiously-carved  pulpits  with  whole  lives  of  legend 
told  in  marble  on  their  panels,  altars  that  are  solid 
masses  of  silver.  The  people  who  built  these  churches, 
so  white  and  pure  and  delicate,  had  a  cheerful  religion, 
a  faith  of  love  and  trust  and  hope.  It  was  something 
that  was  the  natural  outgrowth  and  development  of  the 
sunshine  and  smiling  fields  of  Tuscany,  lustrous  with 
the  rich  foliage  of  their  olives,  and  wreathed  and  fes- 
tooned and  garlanded  with  grapes.  It  was  the  natural 
incense  of  happy  Italy  ascending  to  heaven, — something 
very  different  from  the  slavish  superstition  and  morbid 
religion  that  hang  like  a  pall  over  this  land  to-day, 
when  men  have  lost  their  sense  of  the  living  Christ  in 
the  worship  of  His  dead  body  and  of  death. 

What  might  have  been  the  future  of  Italy  and  of  the 
Continent  and  of  the  world  if  this  auspicious  aurora  of 
freedom  had  not  been  quenched !  How  different  might 
history  have  been  if  the  republics  of  Tuscany  instead  of 
Rome  had  guided  Italy ! 

And  we  too?  It  is  the  tragic  fate  of  these  early 
Italian  republics  which  is  the  European  argument 
against  republicanism.  Men  of  learning  and  experi- 


ORVIETO.  305 

ence  in  the  conduct  of  affairs  meet  you  with  it  all  the 
time  when  you  challenge  a  discussion  of  our  free  insti- 
tutions and  form  of  government.  The  dead  republics 
of  Italy — dead  in  their  youth — were  relatively  as 
powerful  as  we  are ;  they  carried  their  arms  and  com- 
merce over  the  known  world.  Their  people  were  as 
prosperous  as  we  are ;  they  had  more  of  learning  and 
cultivation  and  higher  education.  But — it  is  the  ver- 
dict of  history — their  institutions  and  popular  form  of 
government  tended  to  develop  and  bring  into  power 
the  average  and  commonplace  man.  The  state  fell 
under  the  control  of  this  class  of  men,  and  went  rapidly 
to  pieces.  Now,  says  the  European  statesman,  "Are 
you  in  America  not  travelling  the  same  road?"  And 
it  is  a  pretty  hard  question  to  answer. 
SIENA. 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 


ORVIETO. 

THE  HILL-SET  CITIES  OF  TUSCANY— ASHES  OF  THE  MIDDLE 
AGES — A  PALACE  WAITING  AT  TEN  FRANCS  A  DAY — 
MEDIEVAL  CRIME  AND  PAGANISM— DEVOTED  SERVICE — THE 
LEQEND-FAC.ADED  CATHKDRAL  OF  ORVIETO — THE  EUROPEAN 
CATHEDRALS — SHARP  CONTRAST  BETWEEN  THE  BUILDINGS 

AND  THE   WORSHIP    IN    THEM— VlN    DU    PAYS  OF  ORVIETO— 

THE  WINES  OF  ITALY — A  GOOD  BISHOP'S  DEATH— Esf,  EST, 
EST,  OF  MONTE  FIASCONE — THE  FALERNIAN  FIELDS  OF 
HORACE. 

ORVIETO,  like  Siena,  is  the  fortressed  and  castellated 
crown  of  a  hill  frowning  with  defiant  bastions  of  solid 
rock,  and  with  great  gloomy  gates  that  look  treacher- 
ous and  inauspicious.  One  almost  fears  to  enter  their 
black  and  yawning  shadows,  and  recalls  instinctively 
the  venomous  ferocities  and  merciless  passions  that 
w  26* 


306  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

scorch  the  pages  of  mediaeval  Italian  history.  But  the 
gateways  are  unguarded  now,  the  threatening  parapets 
empty  of  helmet  or  weapon,  the  ditches  dry  and  dusty 
and  unclean  with  the  foul  refuse  of  a  modern  Italian 
town.  To  violence  and  the  unbridled  play  of  lust  and 
fierce  passions  have  succeeded  exhaustion,  extinction, 
ashes.  Only  the  harmless  form  remains  like  the  skele- 
ton fibre  of  a  dead  and  worm-gnawed  leaf. 

These  hill-set  cities,  so  distinctive  and  suggestive,  are 
one  of  the  charms  of  the  lovely  landscape  of  Tuscany, 
and  Orvieto  is  one  of  the  most  picturesque  and  striking 
of  them  all,  not  even  excepting  Perugia.  Its  walls  are 
steep  and  precipitous,  sheering  down  for  hundreds  of 
feet,  the  solid  masonry  growing  into  the  hewn  tufa  rock 
so  that  it  cannot  be  seen  where  the  one  ends  and  the 
other  begins.  Its  battlemented  outlines  stand  clear- 
cut  against  the  sky,  grim  walls  and  clusters  of  dungeon 
towers  and  open  campanili  and  ascending  masses  of  tall 
Italian  dwelling-houses  forming  a  fine  gray  setting  for 
the  white  marble  relief  of  the  famed  cathedral.  At  sun- 
set, when  the  slanting  rays  fall  across  the  valley,  light- 
ing up  the  gray  tops  with  a  glory,  and  flooding  plain 
and  stream  below  with  glowing  color,  it  is  a  perfect 
picture. 

"The  splendor  falls  on  castle  walls 

And  snowy  summits  old  in  story  ; 
The  long  light  shakes  across  the  lakes. 


— : They  die  in  yon  red  sky ; 

They  faint  on  hill  or  field  or  river." 

There  is  a  shadowy,  elusive  sketch  of  Orvieto  by 
Turner  in  his  collection  in  the  National  Gallery  in 
London,  all  slanting  lines  of  sunset  and  dissolving 
landscape ;  and  it  is  very  like,  for  the  whole  spirit  of 
the  scene  is  the  spirit  of  Turner's  genius.  It  is  Tur- 
neresque  :  that  best  describes  it. 

The  picture  of  Orvieto,  however,  is  all  from  the  out- 


ORVIETO.  307 

side.  Once  inside,  the  streets  are  narrow,  dirty,  .nean- 
ingless,  and  hot.  They  are  commonplace,  too,  for 
Tuscany,  devoid  of  legend  and  special  monument,  full 
of  smells,  wretchedness,  and  uncleanness.  The  historic 
cathedral,  brilliant  in  black  and  white,  is  the  sole  mod- 
ern attraction.  There  are  other  churches  in  plenty,  but 
they  are  shabby,  uninteresting,  and  wanting  in  any 
special  significance. 

Few  strangers  find  Orvieto,  for  it  is  not  a  halting- 
place  on  the  modern  lines  of  travel ;  nevertheless,  the 
accommodations  for  the  traveller  are  very  good.  He 
can  have  a  whole  palace  to  himself  if  he  wants  it,  and 
a  whole  train  of  servants,  at  verv  little  cost.  Orvieto 
was  once  a  powerful  city  and  tin-  home  of  the  Guelphs, 
a  family  who  built  their  Imuses  as  strongholds  and 
sorely  needed  that  style  of  residence.  It  is  now  a  deso- 
late town  of  a  few  thousand  souls,  but  the  strong  rock- 
walled  houses  are  all  there  yet,  and  the  dwindled  Or- 
vieto of  to-day  resembles  a  small  boy  struggling  in  his 
father's  ulster.  This  effect  is  very  general  over  all 
Italy. 

My  hotel  was  a  palace  of  past  generations,  desolate 
and  pathetic  in  its  sunken  fortunes,  but  grand  yet. 
The  rooms  were  spacious  and  stately  in  height  and  pro- 
portions. The  walls  were  pictured  in  bright  color 
and  moving  design  from  top  to  bottom, — a  great  serial 
story  in  fresco  that  ran  through  halls  and  chambers; 
a  tale  of  lords  and  ladies,  of  love  and  wars,  of  olive- 
groves  and  stormed  fortresses,  of  banquets  and  knightly 
halls  and  fountains  and  blushing  gardens, — a  reminis- 
cence of  Boccaccio,  in  fact.  Along  the  solemn  stair- 
ways, in  the  silent  corridors  and  vast  dining-hall,  stood 
marble  statues,  looking  so  shut  up  and  lonesome  that 
it  seemed  as  if  they  must  speak  at  the  dear  sight  of  a 
human  face.  It  was  a  whole  lordly  palace  waiting  for 
one,  and  glad  to  see  its  lord  at  ten  francs  a  day. 

My  bedchamber  was  a  grand  apartment  on  the  first 
floor,  so  nobly  high  that  you  lost  the  demeaning  sense 


308  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

of  there  being  any  one  domiciled  above  you,  so  long 
that  when  you  placed  your  two  wax  candles  in  one  end 
of  the  room  you  could  not  see  the  other.  A  glory  of 
romantic  frescos,  too,  ran  all  around  the  spacious  walls. 
It  was  well  appointed,  also ;  everything  was  clean  and 
neat  and  fresh,  and  my  assiduous  retainers  were  only 
happy  when  they  were  bringing  in  continuous  cans  of 
hot  water.  The  baronial  floors,  however,  were  all  of 
marble  and  bare  stone,  innocent  of  carpet,  rug,  or 
matting,  and  there  was  no  lock  on  the  doors, — that  had 
gone  with  the  centuries, — although  some  huge  wrought- 
iron  clamps  and  hasps  showed  that  one  of  no  little 
strength  had  once  been  necessary.  The  stone  walls, 
however,  were  four  or  five  feet  thick,  and  gave  an  emi- 
nent feeling  of  security. 

The  table  was  full  and  good,  and  even  elaborate, 
while  the  service  was  excellent.  It  was  more :  it  was 
devoted.  The  traditions  of  the  centuries  of  the  grand- 
eur and  state  of  the  house  seemed  to  come  down  upon 
the  dignified,  stately  old  servant  who  officiated  as  but- 
ler and  footman  and  ga^on,  and  he  did  his  best  to 
meet  the  accumulated  responsibilities.  He  struggled 
manfully  to  supply  in  himself  the  services  of  a  whole 
retinue  and  conceal  the  deficiency  of  the  troops  of 
servitors  that  once  lined  the  hospitable  halls.  At  my 
private  apartments  he  announced  in  stately  form,  "  The 
dinner  is  served,  signor,"  and  bent  with  grave  obei- 
sance as  I  passed  through  the  solid  stone  doorway.  He 
disappeared  deftly,  and  as  I  approached  the  great  door 
of  the  old  dining-hall  there  he  was  again,  drawn  up  in 
the  shadowy  similitude  of  two  invisible  lines  of  solemn 
footmen.  I  walked  between  him  in  serious  state,  and, 
lo !  he  was  behind  my  chair  as  I  made  ready _to  sit  down 
to  my  solitary  dinner,  served  under  courtly  frescos  and 
statuary  and  a  wealth  of  drooping  flowers.  The  efforts 
of  this  ancient  servitor  to  support  the  departed  glories 
of  the  house,  his  simple  fidelity  to  the  name  and  blood 
and  dignities  that  had  drifted  away  hundreds  of  years, 


ORVIETO.  309 

was  almost  touching.  It  never  relaxed  for  a  moment 
during  the  twenty-four  hours  of  my  stay,  every  meal 
being  served  with  equal  state  commensurate  to  its  rank 
in  the  service  of  the  day.  And  when  on  leaving  I 
played  my  American  part  in  the  comedy  by  giving 
from  the  parting  "good-hand"  a  five-franc  note,  I 
think  the  old  fellow  dreamed  for  a  brief  moment  that 
perhaps  the  good  old  days  of  princes  and  Cencian 
ladies  and  brigand  cardinals  had  come  back  again. 

In-doors  Orvieto  was  very  pleasant  and  comfortable. 
Out  of  doors  the  sun-baked  town  is  unattractive  and 
worse  than  comfortless.  The  whole  place,  perched  on 
a  high  mass  of  rock  and  forever  exposed  to  the  beating 
rays,  is  parched  and  heated.  The  whole  life  of  the 
place  is  dry  and  miserable.  The  sweet  breath  of  the 
fields  never  blows  here.  No  fragrance  of  fresh  leaves 
and  flowers  ever  reaches  this  parched  town  swung  high 
in  the  hot  air.  The  streets  glare,  the  walls  are  the 
home  of  the  glittering  lizard.  The  whole  impression 
of  the  place  is  disappointing,  it  is  so  unlike  the  soft 
and  gentle  wine  of  Orvieto,  famous  even  down  to 
Rome,  or  the  graceful  tracery  of  the  cathedral, — the 
two  associations  of  the  spot. 

In  solid  Siena,  with  its  comfortable  bourgeois  exist- 
ence, you  seem  to  feel  even  at  this  day  something  of 
the  real  life  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  is  passionless  and 
still,  but  living  yet,  although  without  relation  or  mean- 
ing to  our  time.  Orvieto  is  dead, — an  extinct  volcano, 
— an  ashy  residuum  of  mediaeval  crime.  There  is 
nothing  in  the  history  of  society  more  appalling  than 
Italy  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries.  It  is 
hard  to  conceive  of  it  now, — impossible  to  reconstruct  it 
even  in  imagination.  We  are  all  somewhat  familiar 
with  the  Borgias  and  the  Cencis,  whose  annals  blister 
the  history  of  Rome  and  are  conspicuous  because  of  that 
theatre,  but  all  interior  Italy  was  filled  with  just  such 
great  families,  of  whom  the  world  now  knows  nothing, 


310  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

but  who  were  just  as  wicked,  just  as  passionate,  just  as 
defiant  of  God  and  man.  They  plundered  and  fought 
with  each  other.  They  poisoned  and  intrigued  and  cast 
each  other  into  merciless  prisons.  Their  very  love  was 
defiant  and  criminal  and  shameless.  The  struggles  of 
these  families,  dissolute,  abandoned,  and  unrestrained 
by  any  conventions  of  society  or  religion,  were  the  poli- 
tics of  the  time.  They  made  popes  and  added  the 
prostitution  of  the  headship  of  the  visible  Church  to 
personal  and  private  vice.  It  was  an  age  of  delirium, 
— a  kaleidoscopic  whirl  of  guilt, — an  age  of  ungovern- 
able passions,  of  barbarous  ferocities,  of  vicious  pleas- 
ures indulged  in  openly  as  by  pagans.  The  picture  of 
that  day  is  a  confused  panorama  of  morbid  superstition 
and  measureless  crimes;  of  masses  and  miracles  and 
murders;  of  poisonings  and  appalling  incests ;  of  fla- 
gellants; of  conspiracies  and  treacheries ;  of  dungeons 
and  tortures  and  atrocious  cruelties.  This  was  the  Italy 
of  Orvieto. 

The  modern  renown  of  Orvieto  is  its  beautiful  cathe- 
dral, another  of  those  magnificent  Italian  Gothic  struc- 
tures, all  clad  in  white  and  edged  in  black,  after  the 
striking  fashion  of  the  Pisan,  Sienese,  and  Florentine 
work.  The  whole  fayade  of  the  front  is  covered  with  a 
white  net-work  of  miniature  statuary, — the  history  of 
the  world,  apparently,  according  to  medieval  tradition, 
in  a  series  of  tableaux.  There  are  thousands  of  figures. 
The  pictures  begin  with  Adam  and  Eve.  Many  of 
the  scenes  are  ^  recognizable,  but  quite  a  number  are 
evidently  legends  that  are  now  entirely  lost.  All  the 
designs  are  intensely  realistic,  and  many  of  them  ex- 
ceedingly quaint.  In  the  Creation  of  Eve,  for  instance, 
Adam  lies  in  a  dead  sleep  on  the  ground  while  God, 
a  venerable  old  man  with  a  carving-knife,  is  making  a 
slit  in  his  side  with  one  hand,  while  with  the  other  He 
drags  out  Eve,  whose  well-cohTured  head  and  shoulders 
are  just  visible. 

The  building  of  this  cathedral  itself  is  a  curious 


OR  VIE  TO. 

illustration  of  the  wonderful  contrasts  of  its  time.  It 
is  built  in  commemoration  of  a  miracle  establishing  the 
dogma  of  transnbstantiation.  There  was  a  sceptical 
priest  who  doubted  the  truth  of  this  doctrine.  Once, 
when  offering  mass,  he  tempted  a  physical  test  of  the 
sacred  wafer,  when  it  immediately  bled  in  the  five 
gashes,  the  great  drops  of  blood  falling  upon  and  stain- 
ing the  napkin.  The  fact  of  this  bleeding  is  perfectly 
well  authenticated  by  such  evidence  as  attests  the  mass 
of  mediaeval  church  history.  It  was  officially  attested 
by  Pope  Urban  IV.,  and  a  cathedral  ordered  to  be 
built  in  its  honor.  Now,  the  wonderful  contrast  is 
between  the  coarse  conception  of  the  miracle  and  the 
refined,  artistic  conception  of  the  cathedral,  the  bloody 
thanmaturgy  of  the  altar  and  the  pure  and  delicate 
work  of  the  temple.  The  miracle  tells  of  a  barbarous 
condition  of  mind  and  society ;  the  cathedral,  although 
of  the  same  age,  is  a  work  of  the  highest  order  of  art. 
And  this  strong  contrast  between  the  men  who  built 
the  cathedrals  and  the  men  who  conduct  the  worship 
in  them  confronts  one  all  the  time  in  Europe.  The 
architecture  of  the  buildings  is  of  tin*  highest  reach  <»f 
art,  always  dignified,  and  sometimes  approaching  a 
sublimity  that  cannot  be  transcribed  in  words.  The 
altars  are  nearly  always  tawdry  with  tinsel  or  barbaric 
riches,  while  the  devotional  decorations  are  coarse  and 
puerile  beyond  conception, — ghastly,  writhing  images, 
grinning  skulls,  dried  human  limbs  or  whole  corpses, 
wax  figures  gorgeous  in  green  and  yellow  hues  and 
encased  in  cheap  glass  fronts,  marble  images  with  tin 
crowns  or  clothed  in  silk  and  cotton  skirts.  Sometimes 
the  altars  are  furnished  with  imitation  ornaments — 
counterfeit  candlesticks  and  tin  splendors — and  from 
the  rear  they  look  as  shabby,  fraudulent,  and  dreary  as 
the  "  behind  the  scenes"  of  a  second-rate  theatre.  The 
builder  seems  always  to  have  been  educated  and  vigor- 
ous, the  priest  ignorant  and  vulgar.  Were  the  builders 
an  unknown  order  of  men  who  'have  disappeared,  or 


312  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

was  the  Church  of  the  thirteenth  century  something 
immeasurably  superior  to  the  Church  of  the  nineteenth 
century  ? 

At  Orvieto  you  touch  the  finest  wine-growing  dis- 
trict of  modern  Italy.  The  wine  of  Orvieto  itself  is  a 
gentle,  straw-colored  liquid,  much  esteemed  both  for 
its  delicate  flavor  and  soft  acidulous  properties.  It  is 
known  at  Rome  and  is  good  there,  but,  like  all  the 
Italian  wines,  should  be  drank  in  its  own  district. 
They  are  all  of  them  so  delicate  as  not  to  bear  trans- 
portation even  for  fifty  miles.  The  districts  are  also 
very  limited,  so  that  one  changes  his  wine  nearly  every 
day  when  travelling  in  Italy.  Even  if  the  wines  of 
Italy  were  strong  and  rough  enough  to  bear  transpor- 
tation, the  vineyards  of  any  one  grape  are  too  small  to 
establish  any  given  brand  in  the  markets  of  the  world. 

At  Montefiascone,  a  few  miles  south  of  Orvieto,  the 
traveller  tastes  the  queen  of  all  the  wines  of  Italy  to- 
day. It  is  the  Montefiascone,  or  wine  of  the  country, — 
a  Muscatel,  the  finest  brand  of  which  is  popularly  known 
as  Est,  Est,  Est.  Its  name  is  flavored  with  a  legend. 
Many  hundreds  of  years  ago  a  princely  bishop  of 
Bohemia  (the  Bohemia  of  geography  and  not  of  letters) 
was  travelling  to  Rome  in  state.  Before  him  a  whole 
day's  journey  always  went  a  tried  retainer,  who  tasted 
the  wines  of  the  land  and  left  for  his  lord  a  report, 
writing  "  Est"  on  the  door?  of  that  inn  where  the  best 
was  to  be  had.  When  the  lord  bishop  came  to  Monte- 
fiascone, on  the  doors  of  the  village  hostelry  was 
written,  "  Est,  est,  est."  So  good  was  the  wine  that 
the  bishop  never  got  any  farther,  but  died  there  shortly 
afterwards.  Sir  John  Evelyn,  travelling  in  1644, 
says  that  he  saw  here  the  tomb  of  the  bishop,  with  tt*J«i 
inscription : 


"Propter  Est,  Est,  Est, 
Dominus  meus  mortuus  est." 


ORVIETO.  313 

The  modern  story  is  broader,  and  relates  the  in- 
scription as — 

"Est,  Est,  Est.     Propter  nimium  est, 
Dominus  metis  mortmts  est." 

Evelyn,  in  his  quaint  and  simple  diary,  seems  to  con- 
found this  wine  with  the  Falernian  of  Horace,  con- 
fusing, most  likely,  Falerii,  the  modern  village  of  Civita 
Castellana,  near  Montefiascone,  with  Falernus.  What 
is  given  one  now  in  Italy  as  Falernian  wine  is  rather 
poor  stuff,  but  red  and  powerful  as  Horace  sings  it. 
The  modern  Montefiascone  is  a  very  mild  wine  and 
light  in  color,  its  flavor  so  delicate  and  elusive  that  it 
needs  quite  a  cultivated  taste  to  judge  its  virtues.  At 
first  trial  it  feels  in  the  mouth  almost  like  pure,  soft 
rain-water,  but  the  full  benediction  of  its  blessings 
comes  in  time.  The  Horatian  Falernian  fields  had 
grown  poor  and  harsh  in  Pliny's  time,  and  it  is  proba- 
ble that  they  have  entirely  disappeared  now.  But,  in 
drinking  the  soft  and  limpid  Montefiascone,  one  begins 
to  understand  what  may  have  been  the  generous  inspi- 
ration of  the  warmth  with  which  Horace  sings  the 
wines  of  his  country, — a  warmth  which  an  experience 
of  the  modern  wines  of  Italy  hardly  justifies. 


27 


314  NORTHERN  ITALY. 


CHAPTER    XXXIII. 

PISTOJA. 

THE  LOCAL  COLOR  or  THE  ITALY  or  TO-DAY — A  ROMAN  PRE- 
TORIAN  PALACE — A  MEDIAEVAL  HALL  or  JUDGMENT  AND 
A  MODERN  COURT-HOUSE — THE  FEAST  OF  CORPUS  CHRISTI 
IN  A  KURAL  DIOCESE — THE  MIRACLES  or  PROVINCIAL  ITALY 
—A  DYING  FAITH — A  TOUCHING  PEASANT  BAMBINO — AN 
[TALIAN  PROVINCIAL  INN — THE  SMILING  FIELDS  OF  TUS- 
CANY. 

PISTOJA  is  another  of  those  picturesque  Tuscan 
towns  so  interesting  as  having  had  their  day  in  the 
early  ages  of  the  lost  republics  of  Italy, — that  aurora 
of  art  and  freedom  in  Europe,  but  a  morning  that 
never  saw  "the  fulness  of  noon.  It  is  full  of  the  art 
and  architecture  of  the  Pisan  and  Sienese  school,  and 
abounding  in  quaint  remains  of  the  feudal  times  of 
mediaeval  Italy. 

It  is  in  these  hidden  cities  rather  than  in  the  mod- 
ernized towns  that  one  can  best  study  the  past  and  see 
the  present  life  of  Italy.  Here  you  find  the  native 
manners,  the  dress  and  costumes,  of  the  different  classes, 
and,  most  interesting  of  all,  see  the  every-day  life  and 
faith  of  the  people.  Here  are  the  open-air  altars ;  the 
provincial  festas ;  the  miracles  of  the  soil ;  the  quaint 
old  churches,  with  their  mediaeval  legends  graven  in 
stone,  their  feudal  tombs  worn  and  dusty ;  the  curious 
black  Madonnas ;  the  beasts  of  the  Apocalypse  in  all 
their  grotesque  ugliness;  the  devotional  wax-works  for 
the  peasants,  dressed  with  beads  and  crown  and  satins, 
male  dolls  as  well  as  female,  and  framed  and  protected 
in  glass  cases  ;  the  Bambinos,  rnde  but  often  touching  in 
their  earnest  homeliness ;  in  brief,  the  local  deities  and 
the  local  color  of  Italian  religion. 


PISTOJA.  315 

Pistoja  is  an  idyllic  country  town,  and  looks  very 
lovely  under  the  summer  foliage  and  in  its  provincial 
festa  dress.  It  is  the  feast  of  Corpus  Christi  when  I 
am  in  it.  Although  bright  with  the  life  of  this  time, 
it  is  a  very  ancient  place.  Catiline  was  killed  here  be- 
fore the  time  of  Christ,  and  it  must  always  have  been 
a  fighting-point,  as  it  is  just  at  the  foot  of  the  Alps  and 
commands  one  of  the  passes  into  Italy.  Nevertheless, 
although  abounding  in  picturesque  and  imposing  palaces 
and  medieval  buildings,  it  has  not  the  narrow  streets 
and  gloomy  aspect  of  the  ordinary  Italian  town  whose 
foundations  were  laid  and  conditioned  either  in  the 
feudal  ages  or  the  earlier  times  of  imperial  or  repub- 
lican Rome.  It  is  light,  cheerful,  airy,  spacious, — a 
little  Italian  Paris.  In  the  Middle  Ages  it  had  repute 
for  its  manufactures  of  arms,  and  tradition  says  the 
pistol  was  invented  here  and  took  its  name  from  the 
town. 

The  distinctive  feature  of  Pistoja  to-day,  perhaps,  is 
its  ancient  Pretorian  Palace,  now  serving  for  a  court- 
house, as  it  did  of  old  under  another  name.  In  the 
"Hall  of  the  Tribunal"  you  see  yet  untouched  the  mas- 
sive stone  benches  of  the  old  judges,  and  in  front  of 
these  the  great  stone  table, — a  suggestively-gloomy 
court-room  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Directly  living  the 
seats  of  the  judges  there  is  a  curious  picture  on  the  wall 
of  a  fox  dressed  in  robes  and  sitting  in  judgment, — one 
of  those  singular  freaks  of  fancy  or  satire  which  you 
come  across  all  the  time  in  mediaeval  researches.  In 
fact,  this  whole  hall  is  remarkable  for  its  wealth  of 
feudal  heraldic  lore,  and  is  known  and  prized  the  world 
over  for  its  riches  in  this  line  of  study. 

This  entire  hall,  which  is  vaulted  and  supported  by 
massive  square  columns,  is  wholly  covered — ceilings, 
walls,  stairways,  and  columns — with  feudal  coats-of- 
arms  graven  or  painted  on  the  stone ;  some  are  set  in, 
others  cut  in,  others  frescoed.  There  is  not  an  inch  of 
woodwork  in  the  whole  hall, — nothing  but  stone  and 


316  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

wrought  iron, — or,  if  I  remember  aright,  any  windows, 
the  light  coming  in  from  an  opening  in  the  ceiling. 
Among  the  other  striking  remains  is  a  set  of  feudal 
standards,  twelve  in  number,  "the  gonfalons  of  the 
companies  of  the  people,"  proud  memories  of  republi- 
can civic  glory.  The  place  is  rich  also  in  antique  in- 
scriptions. The  modern  contribution  to  this  interest- 
ing historical  monument  is  a  large  tablet,  set  in  the  main 
stairway,  in  honor  of  the  soldiers  who  died  in  achieving 
the  union  and  independence  of  Italy. 

There  is  a  quaint  mediaeval  feature  in  these  towns 
in  the  constant  repetition  in  all  places — on  the  public 
buildings,  in  the  churches,  in  the  piazzas,  on  the  foun- 
tains, in  the  streets,  on  columns  and  doors — of  the 
figure  of  some  animal,  the  symbol  and  popular  crest  of 
the  town.  In  addition  to  all  this,  each  ward  is  desig- 
nated by  a  column  surmounted  with  the  "city  arms" 
in  shape  of  the  symbolic  statue,  and  numbered  with 
the  number  of  the  district.  In  Siena  it  was  the  wolf 
suckling  Romulus  and  Remus,  and  the  design — always 
the  same — was  very  spirited  and  much  superior  to  the 
carving  in  Rome.  Here  it  is  the  lion.  You  see  him 
everywhere,  grim,  worn,  and  stained,  and,  as  some  of 
these  effigies  have  come  down  from  the  twelfth  century, 
sometimes  he  is  rather  decrepid. 

It  was  my  fortune  to  be  in  Pistoja  on  the  Sunday  of 
the  feast  of  Corpus  Christi.  I  had  seen  the  procession 
also  in  Massa,  a  much  ruder  place,  a  few  days  previous. 
The  feature  of  this  feast  is  a  procession  in  which  the 
consecrated  wafer — or,  as  it  is  always  popularly  called 
here  on  this  feast,  the  body  of  Christ — is  carried  by 
the  bishop  through  the  streets  for  the  adoration  of  the 
people.  The  sight  of  this  spectacle  gives  one  a  very 
good  idea  of  the  popular  religion.  In  Massa  the  sacred 
burden  was  followed  immediately  by  a  brass  band,  and 
was  preceded  by  bands  of  peasants  and  little  children, 
marshalled  by  nuns,  bearing  tapers  and  singing  hymns, 


PISTOJA.  317 

— a  rude  procession,  but  rather  effective  at  a  distance. 
Here  the  ceremonies  were  more  elegant,  and  the  scene 
in  the  church  very  brilliant  and  in  good  taste  as  well 
as  picturesque, — the  white  masks  of  the  penitents,  the 
long  white  veils  of  the  girls,  the  lilies  and  the  roses, 
the  gleaming  wax-lights,  the  bending  and  kneeling 
worshippers,  the  clouds  of  incense,  and  the  radiating 
splendors  of  the  altar,  a  shaking  mass  of  flame  and  gold 
and  silver,  making  a  very  dramatic  tableau. 

The  devotion  and  reverence  was  absolute.  I  have 
never  seen  it  equalled  save  once,  in  the  Mormon  temple 
at  Salt  Lake  City,  in  Utah,  when  the  late  firigham 
Young  was  speaking,  and  after  a  while  bluntly  an- 
nounced in  coarse  English  that  the  Spirit  of  God  was 
on  him  and  he  was  going  to  reveal.  The  vast  assem- 
blage of  devout  Mormons  then  seemed  to  feel  the 
bodily  presence  of  God  in  their  midst,  just  as  the  de- 
vout Roman  peasant  does  to-day  all  over  Italy.  There 
is  no  mistaking  the  feeling  and  belief  of  this  people  in 
this  matter.  It  is  no  question  of  trans  or  con,  no  re- 
finement .of  scientific  theology,  with  them.  They  have 
a  corporeal  God,  and  worship  Him  just  as  truly  and 
earnestly  and  with  as  simple  faith  as  their  forefathers 
worshipped  Jupiter  on  the  same  spot.  And  therein 
lies  the  mortmain  grasp — the  dead  hand — of  the  priest- 
hood of  Italy.  The  whole  scene  irresistibly  reminded 
me  of  the  insolent  retort  recorded  in  history  of  a  me- 
diaeval prelate  to  some  civil  ruler:  "I  hold  your  God 
in  my  hands  every  day."  The  indiscreet  priest,  who 
made  this  famous  reply  only  phrased  in  other  words 
the  "  What  are  you  going  to  do  about  it  ?"  of  the  New 
York  political  rough.  And  the  situation  was  very 
much  the  same. 

Both  here  and  at  Massa  the  bishops  had  dull,  heavy, 
gross  faces, — the  faces  of  men  given  to  overeating  and 
blind  following.  In  fact,  in  Italy,  ecclesiastical  promo- 
tion depends  on  mediocrity,  for  it  rests  on  servile  obe- 
dience. The  Roman  bishop,  as  far  as  my  observation 

27* 


318  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

goes,  is  not  the  equal,  morally  or  intellectually,  of  the 
average  American  priest. 

The  absence  of  the  young  and  middle-aged  men  and 
the  men  of  the  better  classes  from  these  religious  cere- 
monies was  marked  and  suggestive.  (Neither  at  Massa 
did  they  take  part  or  still  less  here.)  The  whole  attend- 
ance and  participation  was  by  peasants  and  little  chil- 
dren. The  better  classes  were  represented  solely  by 
women.  In  fact,  the  religion  of  Italy  is  a  shell.  Faith 
is  in  a  transition  state,  just  as  in  the  time  of  Constan- 
tine.  The  upper  classes  and  educated  people  do  not 
believe  at  all  in  the  popular  religion,  nor,  I  think,  do 
the  higher  ranks  of  the  clergy,  who  administer  it  as  a 
political  machine,  and  either  laugh  at  the  credulity  of 
the  common  people  or  defend  it  as  the  best  thing  for 
them  in  their  ignorant  condition.  A  monk,  for  instance, 
in  a  well-known  church  of  Rome,  for  ten  cents  uncov- 
ered and  showed  me  the  imprint  of  the  feet  of  Christ, 
made  on  a  marble  slab  on  a  certain  occasion  when  He 
miraculously  visited  Italy.  The  shape  of  the  foot 
was  neither  Hebrew  nor  Arabian.  The  size  was  co- 
lossal and  the  contour  clumsy.  I  cannot  think  that 
the  learned  cardinals,  many  of  them  men  of  scientific 
and  historic  erudition,  believed  what  this  simple  monk 
believed.  Nevertheless,  they — English  and  American 
as  well  as  Italian  cardinals — accept  principalities  in  a 
kingdom  whose  revenues  are  raised  from  the  offerings 
of  poor  peasants  who  come  to  kiss  and  kneel  before 
just  such  relics.  This  relic,  too,  was  quite  respectable 
compared  with  many  of  them,  and  their  quantity  is 
innumerable,  as  well  as  are  the  miracle-working  images 
and  shrines.  I  had  my  rooms  in  Rome  on  a  short  street, 
about  the  length  of  two  Philadelphia  squares,  and  sit- 
uated in  the  middle  of  the  city.  At  one  end  of  the 
street  was  the  decapitated  head  of  St.  John  and  at  the 
other  a  picture  of  the  Madonna — quite  a  good  work  of 
art,  by  the  way — which  1  as  spoken  from  its  frame,  and 
is,  in  consequence,  very  much  adored.  Lights  were 


PISTOJA.  31  y 

always  burning  at  its  shrine,  which  I  never  found 
deserted  of  worshippers.  I  met  several  Madonnas  who 
had  spoken  or  moved  their  eyes,  and  were  in  conse- 
quence objects  of  special  adoration.  Indeed,  the  popu- 
larity of  certain  images  in  Italy  to  the  exclusion  of 
others  apparently  equally  deserving  is  one  of  the  curi- 
ous features  of  the  churches.  These  inanimate  idols 
of  wood  or  wax  or  marble  have  their  fortunes  just  like 
popular  preachers  or  actresses.  In  the  fine  old  church 
of  St.  Ambrose,  in  Milan,  on  a  slight  metal  column 
in  the  middle  of  the  nave,  I  saw  twined  a  brazen  ser- 

!)ent  which  popular  belief  accredits  as  that  which  Moses 
if  ted  up  in  the  desert. 

Pistoja  is  strong  in  mediaeval  churches,  abounding  in 
graven  images,  odd  statues,  quaint  tombs,  curious  in- 
scriptions, legendary  paintings,  and  the  conventional 
rural  presepe.  Some  of  these  things  are  rude,  others 
works  of  high  art  and  sometimes  of  great  costliness. 
There  is  a  famous  silver  altar  here  on  which  men  worked 
for  two  entire  centuries,  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth,  a 
splendid  and  enduring  monument  of  patient  and  con- 
secrated labor  that  assuredly  deserves  its  well-known 
and  well- won  place  in  the  history  of  silver-work. 

Over  the  tomb  of  a  great  old  feudal  lamilv — a  family 
that  furnished  cardinals  and  warriors  in  the  history  of 
Pistoja  hundreds  of  years  air<> — I  found  the  following 
Latin  puzzle.  The  tomb  lies  in  the  pavement  in  front 
of  the  main  altar  of  one  of  the  old  churches : 

Terra  Teras  Terram 
Te  Terram  Terra 

Tenebit. 

Terra  Trahet  Transit 
Torrida  Terra 
Trahet. 

This  play  on  terra  is  not  infrequent  in  the  mediaeval 
>pitaphs. 

In  another  old  church  there  is  a  Bambino,  with  its 
little  legs  tightly  wrapped  and  swaddled,  just  as  Italian 


320  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

women  swaddle  their  babies  to-day,  which  is  very  much 
the  same  way  as  Indian  papooses  are  bound  up  in  our 
country,  excepting  that  boards  are  not  used.  The  hum- 
ble homeliness  of  this  representation  seemed  at  first  sight 
very  odd  and  ignorant,  but  it  probably  is  the  literal 
truth.  I  suppose  the  middle  and  lower-class  Roman 
women  in  the  time  of  Augustus  swaddled  their  children 
in  just  the  same  way  as  the  same  classes  do  here  now, 
and  if  so,  then  these  provincial  peasants,  in  their  child- 
like simplicity,  are  right,  and  the  conventional  picture 
of  the  Madonna  and  child,  the  world  over,  is  wrong, 
so  far  as  the  accurate  representation  of  fact  is  concerned. 
Among  so  much  that  is  rude  and  coarse  and  ignorant, 
one  comes  all  the  time  on  fine  paintings,  beautiful  fres- 
cos, and  grand  carvings  and  statuary. 

At  this  provincial  place  I  had  the  experience  of  a 
purely  Italian  reception.  There  was  not  a  servant  or 
attendant  of  any  kind  at  the  inn  who  spoke  a  word  of 
French,  German,  or  English.  The  table,  which  was 
excellent,  was  of  Italian  cooking.  The  service  was 
unexceptionable  and  the  rooms  were  good  and  clean, 
but  how  these  Italian  inns  exist  is  a  continual  mystery. 
Here  again  I  was  the  only  guest,  enjoying  the  undivided 
attention  and  service  of  the  whole  establishment,  which 
was  complete  and  full.  At  Bologna  I  met  an  acquaint- 
ance who  had  followed  my  visit  to  Pistoja  about  a  week 
later  and  gone  to  the  same  inn.  He  also  had  had  the 
house  to  himself  during  his  stay.  Nevertheless,  these 
inns,  though  existing  apparently  on  the  casual  chance 
of  an  occasional  visitor,  are  excellent  and  often  admirable 
hostelries, — everything  clean  and  good,  the  service  of  a 
high  order,  the  table  plentiful,  even  to  a  fair  selection 
of  wines,  and  the  host  cheerful,  attentive,  and  obliging. 
The  rooms,  and  halls  too,  are  generally  lined  with  old 
oil-paintings  and  bric-a  brae  carvings,  and  in  the  eve- 
nings there  is  good  music  on  u  the  piazza." 

Pistoja  is  a  fairly  pleasant  place  to  rest  in,  because 


PISTOJA.  321 

coming  from  the  north  you  enter  here  on  the  lovely 
land  of  Tuscany  and  meet  its  early  charms.  Here  you 
begin  lo  see  the  laughing  vineyards,  with  the  vines  and 
grapes  festooned  in  graceful  sweeps,  until  all  the  fields 
seem  to  be  dancing  like  little  loves  and  Bacchuses 
Here  you  find  again — after  the  ashen  and  leaden  gloom 
of  England — the  dear  blue  skies  of  our  own  land. 
Here  in  this  very  Pistoja  you  can  sit  in  the  open  air  in 
the  streets  or  piazzas  (public  squares)  and  drink  your 
wine  under  groves  of  blushing  oleanders.  Here  are 
the  golden  lemon-trees  and  flowering  almonds,  the  fra- 
grant orange-blossoms,  and  avenues  of  grieving  cypress. 
Here  are  the  dark-green  olive-trees,  the  generous  breast 
of  the  earth. 

Perhaps  the  most  distinctive  feature  of  the  landscape 
of  Italy  is  the  human  shape  which  the  olive-tree  takes. 
It  seems  always  to  be  a  human  form  struggling  to 
escape  from  the  imprisonment  of  a  lower  life.  Some- 
times these  shapes  are  of  a  grotesque  and  goblin  effect, 
but  more  often  they  are  writhing,  twisted,  and  contorted 
as  if  in  pain.  In  the  very  fields  and  hillsides  all  around 
him,  one  reads  Ovid  again,  and  all  that  weird  legend 
of  torture  and  suffering  in  an  outer  life  so  strong  in 
Italian  literature.  It  needs  no  imagination  to  see  in 
these  gnarled  trunks  and  struggling  roots  the  im- 
prisoned souls  of  Dante's  verse  and  Dore's  pencil. 
They  are  there.  These  ghostly  trees  inspired  the  poet 
and  the  painter. 

Tuscany  has  always  been  the  native  home  of  beauty. 
It  was  the  land  of  the  Etruscans,  that  wonderful 
people  whose  sense  of  form  is  yet  a  marvel.  It  was 
the  "  Tyrrhenian  shores"  of  the  Greek,  but  it  was 
never  lovelier  or  more  fascinating  than  it  is  now. 


322  NORTHERN  ITALY 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 


RAVENNA. 

AN  ABANDONED  IMPERIAL  CITY — CHRISTIAN  AND  ARIA* 
KUINS— THE  CRADLE  OF  PURE  CHRISTIAN  ART  AND  CIVIL- 
IZATION— THE  OLD  MOSAICS— THE  HONOR  OE  MELCHISEDEK 
IN  THE  CHURCHES  OF  RAVENNA — TOMB  OF  THEODORIC — 
DULL  BOLOGNA. 

To  get  to  Ravenna  from  almost  anywhere,  as  the 
lines  of  travel  are  now  arranged,  one  is  forced  to  go 
through  Bologna,  and  as  the  Italian  railways  connect  by 
what  Italians  themselves  call  "  coincidences,"  one  has 
usually  some  time  on  hand  there.  It  is  a  fatal  railway 
centre,  to  which  one  comes  again  and  again  in  seeing 
North  Italy,  for  Bologna  is  a  dull,  heavy  town,  monoto- 
nous from  its  perpetual  arcades,  which  soon  lose  their  first 
effect  of  novelty,  and  serve  only  to  darken  and  depress. 
The  place  has  the  gloominess  without  the  picturesqueness 
of  a  mediaeval-built  city,  and  in  its  general  effect  is 
unpleasing,  devoid  of  lightness,  elegance,  or  cultivated 
taste.  Even  its  famous  leaning-towers  are  heavy,  dirty, 
and  drunken- looking.  It  is  coarse,  solid,  very  sub- 
stantial, but  shapeless, — something  like  its  famous 
sausages,  which  are  its  symbolic  product  and  devel- 
opment. It  has  contributed  some  other  achievements 
to  the  meat-market  of  the  world,  which  are  proudly 
displayed  in  its  shops.  The  mass  of  the  people  whom 
you  see  on  the  streets  are  like  their  town.  -  They  have 
heavy  forms,  gross,  round  faces,  the  lines  almost  ob- 
literated by  corpulence, — the.  faces  and  bodies  of  heavy 
feeders,  well-to-do,  vulgar  bourgeois. 

The  architecture  is  solid,  monotonous,  and  much  of 
it  rough.  Perhaps  the  central  point  of  interest  which 


RA  VENN  A.  3*23 

they  show  one  is  a  singular  pile  of  churches,  coming 
through  several  ages  down  from  the  fifth  century,  and 
now  all  worked  into  one.  These  churches,  seven  in 
number,  were  built  iri  a  confused  kind  of  way,  at 
different  times,  on  the  site  of  an  ancient  temple  of  Isis. 
They  are  of  different  levels,  one  being  clear  under  the 
main  one  and  serving  now  as  a  crypt,  of  different  orders 
of  architecture,  mostly  quite  rude  and  early,  of  differ- 
ent sizes,  shapes,  and  dedications.  As  they  could  not 
all  exist  in  this  tumbled-over  condition,  each  encroach- 
ing on  the  other  and  pushing  it  into  ruin,  they  have  all 
been  restored,  made  to  communicate  interiorly,  and 
built  or  pressed  into  one  conglomerate  mass  known  now 
as  St.  Stephen's.  It  is  quite  interesting  and  suggestive, 
but  it  is  a  kind  of  sausage,  too,  in  its  way. 

I  have  been  laid  over  at  Bologna  twice,  and  am  always 
glad  to  get  out  of  it.  It  is  a  town  where  the  sense  of 
the  predominance  of  the  physical  is  oppressive  and  re- 
pulsive,— Bologna  "  la  grassa." 

From  heavy  Bologna  you  run  down  to  Ravenna 
returning,  unless  you  are  going  to  make  the  coast-line 
tour  of  Italy.  Ravenna,  once  the  capital  of  the  Occi- 
dental Empire,  the  city  of  emperors,  exarchs,  and  regal 
bishops,  though  rude  and  fallen,  stripped  of  its  former 
wealth  and  possessions,  and  a  very  .picture  of  desola- 
tion, is  a  most  interesting  place. 

It  is  of  vast  historic  significance,  as  the  point  when; 
Christian  art  and  social  life  had  opportunities  to  de- 
velop their  own  growth,  free  from  the  dominating 
intellectual  influences  of  the  Roman  civilization  which 
they  succeeded  and  displaced.  Here  Christian  civili- 
zation flourished  on  its  own  soil  and  was  powerful. 
It  could  develop  freely  its  own  germ  and  law  of  society, 
affected  only  by  the  Byzantine  culture  which  it  met  on 
even  terms,  fighting  and  trading  with  the  East. 

The  town  in  its  general  effect  is  rude,  humble,  and 
inelegant,  poorly  laid  out,  and  the  few  palaces  yd 


324  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

standing  showing  little  traces  of  magnificence  or 
luxury.  The  dwellings  of  the  commoner  kind  are 
very  poor  and  coarse,  the  streets  narrow  and  confined. 
There  are  no  grand  piazzas  or  promenades,  or  great, 
luxurious,  open  spaces.  The  tombs  of  emperors  and 
empresses  are  solid  and  enduring,  but  their  decoration 
rude  and  primitive.  In  fact,  it  is  hard  to  think  of 
Ravenna  as  an  imperial  centre.  The  churches  are 
interesting  in  their  early  half- Byzantine  order  of  archi- 
tecture and  their  quaint  mosaics,  picturing  rudely  the 
Christian  thought  and  legend  of  early  mediaeval  his- 
tory. 

They  show  how  strong  was  the  influence  of  the  Old 
Testament  on  the  thinking  and  life  of  the  early  cen- 
turies as  compared  with  ours.  Moses,  Abraham,  Elijah, 
Joshua,  Abel,  Melchisedek,  Samson,  Solomon,  Adam, 
were  real  men  for  Europe  in  that  age,  whose  influence 
was  daily  felt  and  appreciated.  The  churches  of  Italy 
are  full  of  their  images.  In  these  churches  of  Ravenna 
the  influencing  force  seems  to  have  been  the  patriarchal 
and  earlier  life  of  the  Old  Testament.  Melchisedek 
offering  bread  and  wine  is  everywhere.  It  is  one  of 
the  features  of  Ravenna.  The  quaint  representations 
of  this  scene  pictured  on  altar  after  altar  in  old  mosaic, 
prove  how  minute  is  the  change  in  the  daily  habits  of 
life  here  even  through  the  length  of  a  thousand  years. 
Melchisedek,  the  friend  of  God  and  King  of  Salem, 
generally  stands  behind  or  near  a  humble  wooden  table 
on  which  are  the  bread  and  wine.  The  stiff  little  table 
is  precisely  such  as  is  found  in  a  common  Italian  dwell- 
ing now.  The  wine  is  in  a  cheap  crane-necked  flask, 
just  as  it  is  sold  in  any  Roman  shop  now,  and  the  bread 
is  a  pile  of  the  same  execrably  sodden  wads^ served  one 
in  any  trattoria  to-day.  The  meal  of  Melchisedek,  as 
set  forth  in  these  antique  Ravenna  mosaics,  is  pre- 
cisely that  which  has  been  served  me  more  than  once 
this  year  when  I  entered  a  wayside  inn  in  rural  Italy 
and  asked  for  lunch.  Next  after  this  scene  comes 


RA  VENNA.  325 

Abel  with  his  sacrifice  of  a  lamb,  and  the  offering 
up  of  Isaac.  Abraham  entertaining  the  three  angels 
— the  table  with  the  food  on  it  being  always  con- 
spicuous— and  Elijah  fed  by  the  ravens  occur  often. 
Briefly  stated,  the  sacrificial  legend  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, and  those  stories  from  it  which  relate  the  giving 
or  taking  of  food  from  heaven,  are  the  motif  of  these 
walls.  The  pictures  of  these  scenes  generally  occur  in 
chronological  succession,  closing  with  the  life  of  Christ, 
— a  kind  of  illustrated  historical  argument.  The  actual 
scene  of  the  Crucifixion  does  not  often  appear,  as  it  rarely 
ever  does  in  the  Catacombs,  and  for  the  same  reason, 
that  the  event  was  yet  a  matter  of  deep  shame  and 
mortification  to  the  struggling  Church.  The  symbol 
of  the  cross  does  not  appear  in  the  Catacombs,  I  think, 
at  all  until  the  fourth  century. 

The  predominant  influence  on  the  early  Church  at 
Ravenna  was  not  only  the  Old  Testament,  but,  very 
singularly,  the  first  few  chapters  of  it.  This  is  strongly 
evidenced  by  the  old  mosaics.  These  pictured  walls 
were  the  church  history  of  the  time,  and  the  great  bulk 
of  their  history  does  not  got  Icyond  the  biblical  record 
as  contained  in  the  book  of  Genesis,  short  of  the  story 
of  Joseph.  Indeed,  if  a  travelling  Japanese  scholar, 
ignorant  of  our  history,  were  to  drop  down  in  Ravenna, 
he  would  probably  think  that  Melchisedek  was  the  di- 
vinity to  whose  worship  these  strange  old  churches  had 
been  erected. 

This  revelation  of  these  almost  forgotten  walls  is  an 
evidence  of  how  insularity  or  ignorance  may  amplify 
any  fragment  that  seizes  on  its  imagination,  and  perhaps 
swell  it  into  an  imposing  fabric.  These  early  Christians, 
rude  and  simple  and  earnest,  knew  nothing  more  of 
Melchisedek  than  we  do,  but  his  brief  story,  appealing 
in  some  way  to  their  hopes  or  wants,  became  a  vivid 
reality,  directing  their  devotions  and  coloring  their  whole 
theological  thought  for  several  centuries.  This  name  of 
Melchisedek,  which  is  not  named  perhaps  once  a  year 

28 


326  NORTHERN  ITALY. 

in  a  modern  Protestant  church,  was  to  these  Ravenna 
Christians  a  name  second  only  to  that  of  Christ. 

The  Ravenna  which  we  see  is  the  Ravenna  of  the 
sixth  century,  and  these  old  basilicas  are  therefore  not 
lumbered  up  with  the  importunate  crowd  of  mediaeval 
saints  who  press  nearly  everything  else  out  of  most  of 
the  modern  Italian  churches.  They  are  filled,  how- 
ever, with  scenes  in  the  lives  of  the  Christian  emperors, 
who  seem  to  have  been  held  in  the  Church  at  that  time 
in  much  the  same  honor  as  a  saint  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
Church  and  state  were  evidently  bound  up  far  more 
closely  than  anything  we  know  of  now. 

The  mosaics,  for  which  the  town  is  so  celebrated,  and 
which  are  the  specialty  of  its  art,  are  all,  to  a  modern 
trained  eye  at  least,  conventional,  stiff,  formal.  It  took 
later  centuries  of  half  pagan  and  classic  study  to  give 
them  that  perfection  and  finish  which  has  made  them 
the  highest  order  of  painting  for  churches.  The  Byzan- 
tine architecture,  which,  with  the  aid  of  Roman  cul- 
ture, grew  into  such  glory  and  splendor  under  the 
worldlier  influences  of  Venice,  is  here  constrained, 
primitive,  and  humble.  There  is  no  splendor,  no 
grandeur,  no  magnificence,  little  of  luxury  and  cultiva- 
tion. In  fact,  Ravenna,  in  its  social  and  aesthetic  pre- 
sentment, is  the  legitimate  development  of  the  social 
ideas  and  Essenic  teachings  of  the  New  Testament, 
which  declare  war  against  luxury,  refinement,  elegance, 
personal  ease,  temporal  power,  riches,  all  that  goes  to 
make  up  the  civilization  or,  as  it  is  called  in  the  New 
Testament,  "the  spirit"  of  this  world. 

Ravenna  was  a  stronghold  of  Arianism,  which  has 
left  its  traces  here  in  Arian  crosses  imbedded  firmly  in 
the  walls  and  in  the  records  of  the  wanderings  of  the 
ashes  of  some  of  the  dead  emperors  and  leaders  who 
had  embraced  this  faith.  The  Roman  Church,  on  re- 
gaining power,  not  being,  perhaps,  honestly  satisfied  in 
its  own  mind  of  its  power  to  execute  its  threat  of 
burning  their  souls,  took  out  its  vengeance  in  violating 


JIAVKXXA.  327 

their  graves.  Theodoric,  however,  after  some  adven- 
tures, got  his  bones  carried  back  to  their  original  rest- 
ing-place prepared  by  his  daughter,  and  he  now  sleeps 
peacefully  in  the  fields  outside  of  the  walls,  in  a  perfect 
stronghold  of  a  mausoleum.  I  visited  this  last  castle 
of  the  old  warrior  by  moonlight,  and,  as  you  entered 
the  vaulted  and  covered  out  way  and  passed  the  moat 
and  ascended  a  kind  of  drawbridge-stairway,  now  per- 
manent, you  felt  how  savage  \V<-K-  the  instincts  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  when  a  distinguished  and  honored  and 
powerful  ruler  had  to  fight  for  the  repose  of  his  ashes 
against  a  Church  which  professed  to  have  the  exclusive 
monopoly  of  teaching  on  earth  the  doctrines  of  Christ 
and  the  gospel  of  peace. 

This  tomb  is  a  round  tower  of  solid  masonry,  against 
which  even  a  modern  cannon-ball  would  fall  harmless. 
It  is  surmounted  by  a  single  block  of  stone  of  enormous 
size  and  weight,  which  answers  as  a  roof.  The  whole 
structure  looks  as  if  it  were  carved  out  of  rock,  or 
placed  there  by  giants  rather  than  built  by  men. 
Within  this  dense  mass  of  stone — like  the  hollow  for  a 
kernel  in  a  shell — there  is  a  small  altar  and  a  huge 
sarcophagus.  There  were  no  guards  to  watch  the  ashes 
now;  no  janitor  even  to  break  the  solemn  proprieties 
of  the  place  by  a  hungry  whin  ing  for  pour-boire.  So, 
finding  the  ma-sive  grate,  which  opened  to  let  air  and 
dim  light  into  the  dungeon  of  the  altar  of  the  tomb,  we 
dropped  through  its  iron  bars  some  lighted  matches: 
the  stone  floor  fortunately  was  dry ;  the  shadows  fell 
quickly  back  before  the  leaping  lines  of  ephemeral 
flame,  and  for  a  moment  we  had  all  to  ourselves  a  pri- 
vate illumination  of  the  mausoleum  of  Theodoric  the 
Great. 


ROME. 


28*  829 


CHAPTER  XXXV. 

ROME   THE   CENTRE. 
THE  ETERNAL  CITY — THE  SPELL  OF  HOME. 

WHEN  one  first  reaches  the  Eternal  City  it  seems 
almost  hopeless  to  write  of  Rome.  All  the  centuries, 
all  the  civilizations,  all  the  religions  seem  to  centre  here, 
and  the  mind  refuses  to  grasp  in  symmetrical  concep- 
tion the  mighty  whole.  Although  hut  a  small  town 
now  of  only  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  inhabitants,  Rome 
has  a  wonderfully  cosmopolitan  atmosphere,  by  virtue 
both  of  historic  tradition  and  of  present  fact. 

Her  ruins  are  the  record  of  successive  strata  of  civil- 
izations, stretching  back  into  the  shadows  of  history 
until  the  shadows  are  lost  in  the  darkness  of  total  night. 
Her  palaces  are  built  on  the  seats  of  lost  empires  ;  her 
cathedrals  on  the  buried  temples  of  abandoned  faiths. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  during  what  is  substantially  known 
history,  she  lias  been  the  imperial  city  of  the  world, 
ruling  it  either  by  arms,  learning,  or  ecclesiastical 
power,  and  the  monuments  of  her  past  glories  are 
splendid  and  instructive  even  in  ruin. 

To-day  the  men  of  influence  of  all  countries,  and 
of  all  following,  come  to  her  to  learn.  And  so  it  has 
been  for  centuries.  Since  the  last  two  or  three  hundred 
years,  when  travel  was  possible,  there  has  hardly  been 
a  distinguished  name  in  Europe  that  has  not  in  some 
way  left  its  record  in  Rome.  There  is  not  to-day  a 
better  centre  to  meet  the  controlling  men  of  all  the 
world,  one  by  one,  than  Rome ;  and  it  has  been  so  for 
years  and  years.  Sooner  or  later  they  all  come,  either 
in  the  glory  of  power,  or  to  study  in  art,  letters,  religion, 

331 


332  ROME. 

or  statesmanship,  or  driven  by  the  stress  of  misfortune, 
to  die.  Indeed,  the  tombs  of  Rome  are  more  eloquent, 
perhaps,  than  anything  else  of  her  Avorld-wide  rule  and 
sympathy.  You  are  startled  every  now  and  then  by 
meeting  the  graves  of  men  of  distant  ages,  of  far-off 
countries,  of  strange  faiths.  John  Lascaris,  of  Constan- 
tinople, found  rest  here,  as  did  Charles  Edward,  the 
young  pretender  to  the  throne  of  England,  and  his 
brother,  Cardinal  York.  Daniel  O'Connell,  the  great 
Irishman,  gave  his  heart  to  the  keeping  of  Rome. 
Shelley,  Keats,  and  Howitt  lie  near  together  in  the 
Protestant  burial-ground  outside  the  walls,  where  sleep 
with  them  brethren  from  Greece  and  Russia  and  Amer- 
ica and  Asia.  In  fact,  this  little  graveyard,  set  apart 
as  an  exclusion,  has  become  the  catholic  resting-place 
of  all  the  world  save  those  of  the  Roman  faith.  An- 
gelica Kauffmann  is  buried  in  a  chapel  only  a  few  houses 
from  where  I  write.  In  that  magnificent  mausoleum, 
the  crypt  of  St.  Peter's,  are  the  burial-urns  of  the  three 
last  princes  of  the  unfortunate  house  of  Stuart,  who  lost 
the  crown  of  England ;  of  Queen  Christina,  of  Sweden; 
the  Emperor  Otho  II.,  and  others  of  the  great  ones  of 
earth  of  every  tongue  and  clime.  The  central  building 
of  the  powerful  Jesuit  order  is  the  grand  and  fitting 
tomb  of  Loyola.  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul,  or  what  re- 
ligious tradition  accepts  as  their  bodies,  sleep  in  the  very 
heart  of  the  greatest  church  of  all  Christendom,  and  so 
all  through  the  city.  Great  basilicas  at  almost  every 
corner  are  the  tombs  of  great  men  who  have  founded 
states  or  orders,  while  out  the  wonderful  aisle  of  the 
Appian  Way  generals  and  senators  and  magnates  of  old 
Rome,  and  their  friends  or  victims,  the  kings  of  for- 
gotten nations,  are  marshalled  for  miles  and  miles  in 
unknown  and  despoiled  graves. 

Even  in  the  character  of  to-day,  that  present  which 
seems  so  infinitesimally  small  in  the  presence  of  her 
endless  past,  Rome  keeps  her  claim  for  catholicity  and 
world- wide  range  of  interest  and  control.  The  features 


ROME   THE   CENTRE.  333 

of  cosmopolitan  influence  and  connection  are  stamped 
everywhere.  On  the  streets  Greek,  Jew,  and  barbarian 
jostle  each  other.  In  the  hotels,  among  the  ruins,  in 
the  churches,  you  hear  every  tongue  and  see  the  men  of 
all  nations.  Not  the  least  of  the  impressive  features  of 
St.  Peter's  is  the  seemingly  endless  succession  of  the 
confessional-boxes,  each  one  labelled  with  a  different 
tongue,  until  all  the  ends  of  the  earth  are  provided  for. 
It  seemed  a  little  thing  at  first,  but  as  you  walked  until 
wearied  through  arched  aisles,  ever  on  your  left  the 
perpetually-recurring  confessional-niche, — pro  lingua 
Illyrica — pro  lingua  Hispana — pro  lingua  Anglica,  etc., 
— you  felt  the  force  of  a  claim  in  greater  strength  than 
any  words  could  formulate  it. 

Then  again,  in  a  visible  assertion  of  imperial  rule  in 
the  faith  of  the  world,  is  the  great  institution  of  the 
Propaganda,  with  its  massive  central  building,  its  poly- 
glottal  printing-press,  whence  issue  books  in  all  tongues 
and  languages,  and  its  schools  of  priests  for  all  nations. 
There  are  Roman  Catholic  churches,  too,  and  colleges 
for  all  peoples,  not  merely  of  the  Latin  races,  but  for 
those  of  Scotland,  the  United  States,  England,  and  the 
essentially  Protestant  blood  of  the  North.  The  print- 
ing-office of  the  Propaganda  is  particularly  rich  in 
Oriental  type, — an  evidence  of  its  wide  range  and  ex- 
haust less  scope. 

Even  outside  of  the  Roman  Catholic" Church,  which 
fora  thousand  years  has  held  Rome  in  its  exclusive  grasp, 
the  cosmopolitan  impress  and  representation  here  are 
strong.  Of  course  the  foreign  travel  is  from  the  whole 
world.  You  see  not  only  priests  in  the  national  vest- 
ments of  all  nations  and  of  all  shades  and  colors  of 
skins,  but  you  daily  meet  educated  visitors  from  all 
parts  of  the  globe.  At  a  dinner-party  in  good  society 
here  one  frequently  hears  four  or  five  languages,  and 
generally  two  or  three.  The  literature  of  the  book- 
stores is  consequently  German,  French,  English,  Italian, 
Spanish,  with  a  sprinkling  of  the  less  frequently  used 


334  ROME. 

tongues.  The  servants  are  forced  to  know  at  leasi 
French,  and  the  tradesmen  attempt  bravely  to  answer 
in  any  language  in  which  you  address  them. 

To-day  there  are  Hebrew  synagogues  and  six  or  eight 
Protestant  churches,  German,  English,  and  American. 
When  one  remembers  that  for  centuries  the  Roman 
Catholic  service  has  been  the  only  form  tolerated,  and 
that  the  traditions  of  ages  have  been  against  any  other, 
it  can  be  seen  how  wide  the  doors  are  already  opened, 
and  how  the  last  vestige  of  medieval  provincialism  and 
insularity  is  disappearing.  Under  the  reigns  of  Victor 
Emmanuel  and  Humbert,  indeed,  there  is  practical 
liberty  of  faith.  Should  a  Chinaman  now  wish  to  wor- 
ship God  in  Rome,  in  his  own  way  and  as  his  fathers 
have  taught  him,  I  suppose  he  has  the  same  civil  right 
to  do  so  as  he  has  in  San  Francisco,  and  I  think  he 
would  probably  be  as  honestly  protected  in  that  right 
as  in  California,  nor  would  there  likely  be  any  popular 
interference  with  his  devotions. 

These  Protestant  churches,  of  course,  are,  in  the 
main,  for  the  use  of  the  foreign  and  travelling  popula- 
tion of  the  city,  but  so,  for  that  matter,  is  all  Rome. 
Its  luxuries,  its  best  accommodations,  its  galleries,  its 
ruins,  are  all  now  for  the  enjoyment  of  the  Northern 
barbarians,  who,  from  far- oif  countries,  press  in  to-day, 
— not  as  of  old  as  soldiers,  but  peacefully  as  tourists  and 
occupying  the  land.  Without  its  travellers  Rome  would 
be  in  eternal  sleep. 

It  is  this  thoroughly  cosmopolitan  character — taking 
in  its  embrace  the  whole  world  of  to-day  and  stretch- 
ing back  through  the  ages  in  one  continuous  line  farther 
than  recorded  history — that  gives  Rome  its  peculiar 
charm  to  men  of  thought  and  influence.  Hardly  a  man 
of  power  or  education  in  all  history  who  has  not  been 
here  and  left  in  some  way  the  record  of  his  impression. 
And  in  a  country  whose  literature  of  travel  embraces 
such  names  as  Addison,  Ruskin,  Shelley,  the  poet  Gray, 
Hemans,  Hawthorne,  Hi  1  Hard,  Howitt,  Dickens,  Dis- 


ROME   THE   CENTRE.  335 

raeli,  Cardinal  Wiseman,  Byron,  Goethe,  Bunsen, 
Niebuhr,  Hans  Andersen,  Ampere,  About,  Montaigne, 
Chateaubriand,  De  Stael,  Castelar,  Taine,  Guiltier,  and 
farther  back  Chrysostom  and  St.  Paul  and  Cicero,  is 
it  any  wonder  that  one  feels  appalled  at  ever  attempting 
to  write,  and  hardly  knows  how  to  begin,  or  where? 

It  is  this  greatness  of  Rome,  swallowing  up  time  and 
history,  which,  like  the  infinity  of  the  ocean,  draws  all 
men  to  it  with  an  irresistible  fascination,  as  if  it  were  a 
pleasure  to  lose  themselves  in  its  Limitless  existence,  and 
which  creates  that  insatiable  longing  to  return,  to  be 
forever  in  it  and  of  it,  which  every  strong  man  who 
ever  saw  the  Eternal  City  has  confessed.  This  inde- 
finable sense  of  Rome  which  takes  possession  of  one 
with  a  kind  of  pantheistic  force,  and  often  by  some  odd 
power  of  association  involuntarily  floods  his  whole 
being  at  the  mere  passing  memory  of  its  laughing-eyed 
beggars,  its  incense-smelling  churches,  its  corporeal 
smells  wandering  from  dirty  courts,  its  aromatic  Pin- 
cian  or  the  sunny,  humble  Trastevere, — this  strange 
compelling  sense  is  the  evidence  of  the  spell  of  its  his- 
toric incantation.  And  those  blessed  ones  to  whom  it 
comes  are  they  who  have  drank  of  the  real  waters  of 
the  fountain  of  Trevi. 
ROMK 


336  ROME. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI. 
SAINT  PETER'S,  AND  ITALIAN  PREACHING. 

THE  FIRST  CHURCH  OF  THE  WORLD — IN  THE  SHADE  OF  A 
FOREST  OF  MARBLE  COLUMNS — MODERN  INDULGENCES— 
THE  PALLAS  ATHENE  OF  KOME — ITALIAN  PREACHING — AN 
EDUCATING  PULPIT. 

I  AM  not  going  to  attempt  a  pen-painting  of  St. 
Peter's,  the  first  and  greatest  church  of  Christendom. 
It  would  take  a  volume  to  merely  index  its  wealth  of 
present  treasure  and  range  of  suggestive  and  historic 
association,  or  picture  the  outlines  of  its  magnitude. 
Even  then  one  could  hardly  achieve  a  conception  of  it* 
magnificence  and  grandeur  unless  he  had  something  to 
measure  it  by,  and  in  our  country  as  yet,  unfortunately, 
we  have  not. 

Let  me  suggest,  however,  a  point  from  which  one 
might  begin  to  work  up  to  some  approximate  idea  of  its 
size.  Its  effect  and  historical  relation  are  something 
entirely  apart  from  that  and  higher.  In  all  the  United 
States  I  suppose  the  largest  and  most  imposing  pile 
sprung  from  a  single  design  is  "  The  Public  Buildings/' 
at  Broad  and  Market  Streets,  in  the  city  of  Philadelphia 
This  great  structure  has  a  base  of  four  hundred  and  fifty 
feet  by  four  hundred  and  fifty  feet — a  grand  square — and 
is  to  be  over  five  hundred  feet  high.  Now,  you  could 
take  up  this  entire  immense  mass  of  building  and  set  it 
bodily  down  inside  of  the  piazza  or  portico  which  is  the 
magnificent  threshold  of  St.  Peter's;  and  then  you 
would  have  so  much  room  to  spare  that  you  could  throw 
around  in  the  crevices  such  of  our  home  churches  as 
those  of  Holy  Trinity  at  either  New  York  or  Philadel- 


ST.  PETER'S,   AND   ITALIAN  PREACHING.     33? 

phia,  and  they  would  be  lost  and  hidden  in  the  shade 
of  the  corners.  Even  our  longitudinal  Capitol  at  Wash- 
ington with  all  its  extensions  could  be  placed  within  this 
wonderful  portico  without  materially  interfering  with 
the  passage-way. 

This  porch  or  piazza  is  five  hundred  and  eighty-eight 
feet  wide  by  one  thousand  and  thirty-four  long,  and 
some  authorities  give  even  greater  dimensions.  It  is 
flanked  on  either  side  by  a  magnificent  forest  of  marble 
columns,  arranged  in  semicircular  avenues  and  roofed. 
Under  these  pillars,  of  which  with  the  massive  pilasters 
there  are  some  three  hundred  and  fifty,  there  is  per- 
petual shade  and  coolness  even  throughout  the  whole 
summer's  blaze  of  an  Italian  sun,  for  sunlight  never 
penetrates  their  cool  recesses.  And  this  was  their  in- 
tention, as  the  Latin  superscription  legended  above  them 
eloquently  tells:  "A  tabernacle  for  a  shade  in  the  day- 
time and  a  security  and  covert  from  the  whirlwind  and 
from  the  rain."  And  all  this  they,  literally  are  to-day. 

More  than  this,  with  the  immense  fa9ade,  this  noble 
approach  serves  to  hide  all  the  adjacent  and  rear  build- 
ings of  the  place,  and  one  draws  towards  the  entrance 
of  St.  Peter's  without  seeing  a  single  other  structure  in 
the  world.  It  stands  alone  in  the  heart  of  a  great  city. 
Among  the  buildings  very  happily  thus  kept  out  of 
sight  is  the  iniquitous  "Palace  of  the  Holy  Office/'  or, 
in  English,  The  Inquisition.  In  the  centre  of  this  por- 
tico rises  the  needle-like  spire  of  an  Egyptian  obelisk, 
one  of  the  earliest  of  religious  monuments,  erected 
originally  to  the  sun,  now  a  captive  adorning  the  tem- 
ple of  the  God  who  made  the  sun.  Around  it  play 
colossal  fountains,  which  cast  up  massive  jets  of  water 
that,  after  reaching  a  height  over  that  of  an  ordinary 
American  three-story  house,  return  downward  in  deli- 
cious spray,  swept  by  the  winds  over  a  vast  area  of  the 
stone-flagged  pavement  of  the  piazza,  keeping  it  moist 
and  cool. 

All  this  is  but  the  threshold  and  entrance  to  a  won- 
p       w  29 


338  ROME. 

derful  church,  whose  nave  is  a  magnificent  sweep  of 
over  six  hundred  feet  in  length,  in  whose  transepts  you 
could  place  cathedrals,  and  where  the  chapels  in  the 
side  aisles  are  as  large  as  a  common  American  church. 
Withal,  everything  within  is  pleasing  and  harmonious, 
light  and  beautiful,  and  so  symmetrical  that,  until  you 
think  and  compare,  you  do  not  see  or  feel  the  awful 
size.  The  baby  cherubs  that  hold  up  the  basins  of 
holy  water  are  colossal  giants  when  you  note  the  girth 
of  their  limbs  and  compare  them  with  those  of  the 
human  form.  The  doves  are  enormous  birds,  and  the 
angels  recall  the  far-off  shadowy  days  in  the  morning 
of  the  world  when  the  sons  of  God  came  down  to  the 
fair  daughters  of  men.  The  surpassing  splendor  of 
this  great  temple,  which  gathers  up  in  its  walls  a  vast 
congregation  of  churches,  its  uncounted  wealth  of  mar- 
bles and  precious  stones,  its  lofty  arches,  through  which 
you  ever  catch  new  vistas  of  cathedral  grandeur,  its 
labyrinth  of  the  tombs  of  the  great  ones  of  the  earth, 
its  storied  sculptures,  its  enduring  mosaics,  its  endless 
altars  laden  with  gold  and  gleaming  with  sacred  lights, 
all  seem  to  lift  it  out  of  the  limited  range  of  the  handi- 
work of  man  and  up  to  the  proportions  of  some  great 
work  of  nature.  In  "  God's  first  temple"  to-day  you 
feel  "the  primeval  forest,"  the  mysterious  influence  of 
rock  and  water  and  endless  nature. 

While  there  is  a  studied  attempt  in  the  interior  dec- 
orations of  St.  Peter's  to  assert  and  record  the  sectional 
characteristics  of  the  Roman  Church,  particularly  its 
claim  to  temporal  sovereignty  and  its  historic  struggle 
against  national  independence,  still  the  general  effect  is 
so  overpowering  and  grand  that  you  lose  in  it  the  sense 
of  these  blemishes  just  as  you  do  of  all  petty  details. 
Protestants,  at  all  events,  ought  not  to  quarrel  with  St. 
Peter's,  for  it  is  the  cradle  of  the  Reformation.  The 
immense  burden  of  its  construction, — the  main  building 
alone  cost  over  fifty  million  dollars,  and  the  annual  re- 
pairs and  keeping  up  now  demand  forty  thousand  dol- 


ST.  PETER'S,   AND   ITALIAN   PREACHING.    331, 

lars  per  year, — the  immense  burden  of  this  construction 
at  a  time  when  money  was  more  costly  than  now  led 
to  the  sale  of  indulgences  as  a  source  of  revenue,  which 
abuse  was  the  popular  lever  of  the  Reformation.  It 
stiffened  up  Luther  to  take  the  decisive  step,  and 
gave  him  something  with  which  to  go  before  the 
people. 

A  word  here  about  indulgences,  the  profuse  adver- 
tisements of  which  over  the  church  doors  are  one  of  the 
first  things  which  strike  the  ordinary  Protestant  travel- 
ler and  give  him  a  slight  moral  shock.  The  scandalous 
and  public  abuse  of  the  system,  which  gave  birth  to  the 
Protestant  development,  is  long  since  gone  here.  In- 
dulgences . are  not  any  more  issued  on  paper  and  de- 
livered, except,  perhaps,  in  occasional  and  exceptional 
cases.  In  legal  phra>e,  they  take  eilect,  not  by  delivery, 
"but  by  operation  of  law."  Whenever  the  conditions 
are  fulfilled  they  inure  to  the  benefit  of  the  sinner. 
These  "conditions"  are  the  essence  of  the  whole  thing 
and  are  what  are  not  popularly  understood  by  the  non- 
Catholic  world,  which  commonly  looks  on  an  indul- 
gence either  as  a  bare  license  to  sin  or  an  absolute  and 
unqualified  remission  of  sin.  The  modern  Roman  in- 
dulgence, in  its  operative  clause,  is  strictly  limited  in 
its  own  terms,  just  like  the  "absolution"  of  the  Protest- 
ant Episcopal  and  some  other  Protestant  denomina- 
tions. It  is  only  an  authoritative  declaration  to  those 
who  perform  certain  acts  of  devotion  that  their  sins  will 
be  forgiven  them  on  condition  of  true  repentance.  This 
" condition"  is  the  consideration.  Whether  the  average 
Roman  worshipper  understands  the  condition  is  another 
question.  This  condition  is,  however,  the  theory  and 
technical  definition  of  "  indulgence"  as  officially  given 
here  to-day,  and  we  can  hardly  fairly  go  beyond  that. 
The  advantages  accrue  only  to  such  as  truly  repent  of 
their  sins. 

Traces  of  the  old  abuse  and  of  the  popular  miscon- 
ception, however,  abound  everywhere.  Being  ac 


340  ROME. 

irredeemable  promise  as  far  as  the  Church  is  concerned; 
— that  is,  a  promise  which  some  one  else  must  pay  01 
redeem — the  thing  works  out  exactly  like  an  irredeem- 
able issue  of  paper  money.  There  is  an  uncontrolled 
and  reckless  emission  of  them  of  all  sizes  and  values, 
from  one  day  up  to,  I  believe,  in  one  case,  one  hundred 
thousand  years.  Rival  orders,  rival  churches,  rival 
chapels,  compete  in  granting  them,  and  the  whole  town 
is  flooded  with  them.  The  devotional  element  of  Italy 
not  being  mathematical,  the  poor  peasants  will  work 
away,  repeating  prayers,  going  up  steps  on  their  knees, 
making  pilgrimages  to  shrines,  etc.,  for  a  thirty  days7 
indulgence,  when  the  same  acts,  differently  directed, 
would  bring  them  the  same  results  for  a  thousand 
years. 

Again,  practically  there  is  a  commercial  flavor  to 
the  whole  transaction,  and  the  contract  is  often  drawn  up 
with  such  looseness  as  not  only  to  make  it  bristle  with 
problems  to  a  legal  mind,  but  to  suggest  in  equity  a 
"  false  pretence."  In  several  churches  in  Rome,  built 
under  French  auspices,  you  read  this  official  declara- 
tion :  "  Ten  days7  indulgence  to  all  who  pray  for  the 
soul  of  the  King  of  France  granted  by  bull,  or  decree, 

of  Pope ,  A.D. ,"  many  hundred  years  ago.     I 

suppose  some  king  of  France  in  former  days  sold  away 
the  liberties  of  his  subjects  or  gave  away  their  moneys 
and  took  his  pay  in  this  coin.  But  who  is  to  be 
prayed  for,  the  unnamed  king  who  made  the  bargain, 
or  the  living  king  reigning  at  the  time  the  prayer  is 
offered?  And,  if  the  latter,  is  it  a  personal  boon  or  a 
franchise  of  the  French  crown  ?  And,  if  this,  does  it 
inure  to  President  Grevy  now,  as  successor,  or  to  the 
National  Assembly,  more  or  less  infidel,  or  to  the  body 
of  the  French  people,  the  ultimate  and  collective  sov- 
ereignty of  France  ?  Or  has  it  utterly  lapsed,  and  does 
the  simple  Italian  peasant  lose  his  ten  days  entirely? 
Or  does  it  matter  at  all  whether  the  peasant  has  any 
idea  of  what  or  whom  he  is  praying  for  ? 


ST.  PETER'S,   AND  ITALIAN  PREACHING.    34} 

There  are  some  curious  phases  in  the  religious  life 
of  Rome.  The  dominant  power  of  the  old  polytheistic 
faith  crops  out  all  the  time.  The  groups  of  minor  gods 
displaced  by  Constantine  reappear  still  in  the  popular 
saints.  Apollo  with  his  arrows  survives  in  the  beauti- 
ful youth,  St.  Sebastian,  shot  to  death  by  Roman 
archers  near  the  Colosseum,  and  always  painted  or 
sculptured  with  the  shafts  from  the  bow  in  his  body. 
I  have  seen  the  Virgin  Mary  in  the  old  churches  of  the 
Trastevere  and  in  the  ancient  city  of  Pistoju  with  the 
moon  depicted  at  her  feet,  the  old  symbol  of  Venus, 
and  thought  of  Milton's 


11  Astarte,  Queen  of  Heaven,  with  crescent  horn." 

The  divine  honors  paid  to  the  emperors  in  the  cor- 
rupt decadence  of  Rome  are  reproduced  in  the  doctrine 
of  the  infallibility  of  the  Pope.  There  are  saints,  too, 
for  the  seasons,  saints  for  cities  and  provinces,  saints  for 
lovers,  saints  for  harvest-time,  saints  for  the  horses, 
saints  to  be  invoked  for  diseases,  just  as  in  the  familiar 
mythology  of  our  school-books,  and  shrines  and  special 
altars  for  their  worship  in  these  special  characters. 

But  the  most  striking  development  of  this  tendency 
is  comparatively  recent;  at  least,  its  "  push"  is  modern, 
and  of  our  very  time.  Rome  is  to-day  as  thoroughly 
dedicated  to  the  Virgin  Mary  as  ever  Athens  was  to 
Pallas.  The  Christian  Roman  of  this  generation  asks 
of  the  Virgin  just  what  the  patriotic  Athenian  of  classic 
times  asked  of  Minerva,  and  looks  to  her  for  the  same 
aid  and  protection.  Her  churches  are  far  more  numer- 
ous than  those  of  any  other  dedication,  and  her  altars 
in  the  churches  are  those  most  popular  and  frequented. 
Her  images  work  the  miracles  and  have  the  throngs  of 
worshippers. 

But  the  modern  worship  of  the  Virgin  is  not  a  mere 
popular  impulse  which  might  be  apologized  for  on  one 
hand  or  explained  away  philosophically  on  the  other. 


342  ROME. 

The  order  comes  from  the  Vatican,  and  is  a  part  of  a 
policy  deliberately  adopted  and  boldly  lived  up  to. 
The  Church  of  the  country  avows  it  and  glories  in  it. 
On  the  doors  of  the  churches  of  Rome  there  appeared 
in  May  of  this  year  official  ecclesiastical  notices,  signed 
by  high  prelates,  speaking  of  this  city  proudly  as 
"  Rome,  the  city  of  Mary,  and  Rome,  the  city  of  Jesus,'' 
giving  to  the  woman  in  written  language  the  precedence 
which  she  always  has  here  in  the  hearts  of  her  wor- 
shippers. 

The  religious  Roman  art  of  this  generation  will  go 
into  history,  too,  as  distinctively  consecrated  to  this  new 
deity.  Pius  IX.  raised  in  the  central  Piazza  di  Es- 
pagna  a  towering  obelisk  in  honor  of  the  triumph  of 
the  dogma  of  the  immaculate  conception.  He  panelled 
the  tribunal  of  St.  Peter's  with  a  great  tablet  com- 
memorating its  official  promulgation  by  the  GEcumen- 
ical  Council,  and  recorded  on  side  panels  the  names 
of  the  cardinals,  archbishops,  and  bishops  of  all  the 
world  voting  for  the  measure.  He  added  to  the  cele- 
brated stanze  of  the  Vatican — a  suite  of  state  rooms 
frescoed  by  the  great  masters — an  additional-  room 
wholly  devoted  to  the  history  of  the  new  dogma,  its 
passage  in  the  council,  its  promulgation  by  himself, 
and  the  reception  of  the  news  in  heaven  !  On  one  of 
the  fa9ades  of  the  square  base  of  the  obelisk  just  men- 
tioned there  is  an  attempt  to  represent  in  marble  the 
very  act  of  the  conception  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  by  the 
Holy  Ghost, — a  peculiar  but  characteristic  illustration 
}f  the  morbid  bent  of  the  Roman  ecclesiastical  mind. 

Every  Roman  girl,  the  Italian  women  tell  me,  is 
baptized  Maria.  She  may  have  as  many  other  names 
as  her  parents  choose  to  give  her,  but  Maria  is  obligatory. 

Did  classic  Athens  ever  do  as  much  as  all  this  for 
her  Pallas? 

I  close  with  a  word  on  the  way  they  preach  in  Italy 
which  has  some  decided  advantages  over  our  usage. 


ST.  PETER'S,  AND   ITALIAN  PREACHING.     343 

While  the  sermon  has  become  the  central  feature  in 
Protestant  worship  instead  of  a  mere  incident,  as  in  the 
old  Catholic  service,  it  is  not  a  little  singular  that  the 
preaching  in  the  Roman  churches  should  be  so  much 
freer  and  more  natural  than  with  us,  and,  of  course,  as 
a  consequence,  more  effective.  In  the  first  place,  it  is 
more  dramatic.  In  the  churches  of  Italy  a  platform 
or  scaffolding  of  some  kind  is  often  built  in  front  or 
out  of  the  pulpit.  On  this  the  preacher  stands  in  full- 
length  view  of  his  hearers,  whom  he  addresses  all 
around,  facing  at  will  in  any  direction.  On  this  plat- 
form, a  little  to  the  rear  of  the  speaker,  there  is  gene- 
rally a  high  crucifix,  a  chair  in  which  he  may  rest  by 
sitting  from  time  to  time  as  he  talks,  and  sometimes 
a  little  table  for  a  glass  of  water,  a  Bible,  or  a  handker- 
chief, but  not  for  manuscript.  I  have  never  seen  a 
Roman  Catholic  priest  read  a  sermon.  This  platform, 
which  is  raised  six  or  eight  feet  from  the  floor,  is,  in 
some  churches,  hung  with  tapestry,  illustrating  sacred 
legends.  The  whole  makes  a  p leasing  picture,  and 
gives  the  speaker  a  much  greater  freedom  and  power 
of  oratorical  action  than  the  rigid,  straight-line,  box- 
pulpits  of  our  land. 

And  the  freedom  of  the  people  is  equal.  When 
the  sermon  is  about  to  begin  they  all  settle  themselves 
around  in  chairs  in  the  best  positions  to  hear  comforta- 
bly. The  churches  are  so  large  that  a  vast  audience 
can  be  thus  accommodated,  each  in  his  chair,  but  in 
irregular  groups,  families  or  friends  together.  When 
the  audiences  number  thousands  they  become  more 
"ompact,  and  around  the  seated  hearers  are  dense 
crowds  of  men  and  women  standing.  No  one  is  obliged 
here  by  stress  of  custom  or  the  pressure  of  respectability 
to  hear  a  sermon.  When  the  service  is  over  "  church 
is  out,"  and  you  can  go,  unless  you  think  the  preacher 
has  something  to  say  worth  listening  to.  You  are  as 
free  as  at  an  American  political  meeting.  If  the  ser- 
mon is  dull  or  stupid  you  can  leave  at  any  moment, 


344  ROME. 

You  can  go  out  of  the  building,  or  walk  through  its 
grand  aisles,  crowded  with  sculpture  and  paintings  and 
historic  tombs.  At  your  convenience  you  can  go  back 
to  the  speaker  when  he  grows  more  eloquent  than  the 
tombs  or  master-pieces  of  art.  If  he  is  not  equal  to 
the  situation,  you  can  let  him  alone. 

In  fact,  the  service  exactly  resembles  our  political 
meetings  in  the  freedom  and  mobility  of  the  audience. 
The  preacher  holds  his  hearers  by  his  abilities  and  his 
eloquence  and  not  by  outside  force.  If  he  has  nothing 
to  say,  or  cannot  give  his  sacred  message  as  it  should  be 
given,  he  has  no  hearers,  and  no  opportunity,  therefore, 
to  discredit  his  high  office,  or  to  make  the  Gospel  dis- 
tasteful through  his  own  weakness  or  ignorance.  It  is 
just  to  the  discipline  of  this  training  that  I  ascribe  the 
general  eloquence  of  the  Roman  clergy  and  the  popular 
impression  made  by  their  preaching.  They  have  the 
same  incentive  to  speak  well  that  the  American  poli- 
tician has  when  addressing  his  fellow-citizens,  or  the 
American  lecturer,  who  must  even  do  more, — attract 
people  to  pay  for  the  privilege  of  hearing  him. 

Often  the  scene  during  sermon-time  in  an  Italian 
church  is  a  very  picturesque  one.  Women  sit  nursing 
their  babes  in  comfortable  cane  chairs ;  others  are  on 
their  knees  in  silent  prayer ;  little  children  are  playing 
quietly  among  the  listening  groups  at  the  chancels  of 
adjoining  altars;  squads  of  ecclesiastical  students,  in 
bright  scarlet  or  blue  gowns,  drop  in  on  their  way  to  or 
from  college  to  hear  the  noted  orators,  and  remain  as 
long  as  their  critical  judgments  are  satisfied ;  soldiers  in 
uniform  hang  on  the  outskirts,  and  men  come  and  go 
as  if  the  sermon  were  a  thing  of  life  and  interest  and 
not  a  dead  body  of  words.  In  brief,  the  hearers  listen 
or  the  preacher  has  no  hearers,  and  in  either  case  there 
is  not  the  loss  of  a  sermon. 

The  average  American  clergyman,  accustomed  to  hold 
his  audience  by  some  force  outside  of  himself,  will  prob- 
ably object  to  all  this  as  irreverence,  but  I  do  not  see 


ST.  PETER'S,  AND  ITALIAN  PREACHING.     34* 

that  it  is.  I  do  not  think  it  is  more  irreverent  for  chil- 
dren to  play  in  the  house  of  God  than  to  be  tortured 
there  by  unnatural  confinement  on  high  benches  that 
drive  the  blood  out  of  the  legs.  I  do  not  believe  it  is 
more  irreverent  for  poor  women  to  nurse  their  children 
in  the  house  of  God  than  to  stay  away  because  they 
have  no  one  to  nurse  them  at  home.  And,  finally,  it  is 
not  more  irreverent  to  get  up  and  leave  in  the  middle 
of  a  soporific  sermon  than  to  go  to  sleep.  Moreover, 
if  this  honest  freedom  develops  a  higher  order  of  ser- 
mons, it  is  the  very  highest  kind  of  reverence.  I 
notice  further,  on  the  question  of  reverence,  that  when 
the  Roman  priest  is  about  to  begin  to  preach  he  kneels 
on  the  open  platform  for  a  few  momenta  in  silent 
prayer,  and  the  whole  congregation  kneels  and  prays 
with  him. 

As  a  training-school  I  can  think  of  nothing  better 
adapted  to  develop  the  oratorical  power  and  real  effi- 
ciency of  the  preacher  than  this  custom.  It  is  a  practi- 
cal use  of  the  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  It  is 
exactly  the  training  which  our  secular  speakers  un- 
dergo, and  those  of  them  who  are  not  speakers  soon 
ascertain  it,  while  the  conventional  preacher  never  finds 
it  out. 

It  is  customary  for  us  to  speak  and  think  of  the  Ro- 
man Catholic  form  of  worship  as  rigid  and  "  formal." 
It  is,  in  fact,  in  its  whole  ritual  and  service,  the  most 
flexible  in  the  world,  and  it  is  this  very  power  of  self- 
adjustment  and  adaptation  that  has  given  it  its  great 
hold  on  all  times,  all  countries,  and  all  peoples. 

ROME. 


846  ROME. 


CHAPTER    XXXVII. 

THE    PANTHEON. 

THE  OLDEST  HOUSE  OF  CONTINUOUS  HUMAN  WORSHIP  IN  rim 
CIVILIZED  WORLD— GRAVES  OF  RAPHAEL  AND  VICTOR  EM- 
MANUEL— OLD  AND  NEW — MQDERN  PAGANISM — CLEANING 
UP  THE  PANTHEON. 

WHEN  you  enter  the  Pantheon,  and  passing  by  the 
cheap  adornment  of  pictures  and  altars  look  through 
the  floating  dome  up  to  the  sky  "  where  God  sitteth 
eternal  in  the  heavens/7  you  are  in  the  oldest  place  of 
human  worship  in  the  civilized  world  which  yet  retains 
its  ancient  form  and  structure.  The  very  building,  as 
it  stands  to-day,  is  the  one  in  which  the  vanished  gods 
of  classic  Rome  were  worshipped  with  sacrifice  and  in- 
cense and  prayer  before  Christ  was  born  in  Bethlehem, 
and  it  is  the  only  spared  monument  of  the  kind  that 
comes  down  from  before  the  Christian  era. 

Robbed,  plundered,  defaced,  now  closed  and  voiceless 
in  the  transition  of  faiths,  now  filled  with  soldiers,  a 
fortress  fought  around  by  rival  Popes  proclaiming 
themselves  the  vicars  of  a  God  and  new  gospel  of 
peace,  now  given  over  to  neglect  and  profane  uses,  the 
debris  of  mediaeval  night  and  ruin  rising  around  its 
base  and  portico  and  threatening  to  bury  it  with  the 
ages,  it  still  stands  as  it  stood  before  the  angels  sang 
the  hymn  of  the  nativity  in  Judea,  and  men  worship 
God  within  its  walls.  In  its  endless  associations  and 
its  perfect  beauty,  which  cannot  be  torn  away  from  it, 
it  is  the  most  effective  and  suggestive  of  all  the  temples 
of  Christendom  to-day.  In  the  old  days  when  the  fires 
on  its  altar  were  kindled  to  Jupiter,  it^  dead  brick  walls 
of  massive  masonry  were  outlined  with  pure  white 


THE   PANTHEON.  347 

marble,  glittering  in  the  sun  and  soft  in  the  moonlight. 
Popes  and  princes  have  carried  this  off  to  embellish 
their  palaces  and  enrich  their  favorites.  Its  wonderful 
dome  blazed  within  and  without  with  brass  and  bronze. 
Emperor  Constantine  came  to  Rome  between  600  and 
700  A.D.,  to  worship  at  the  shrines  and  adore  the  relics 
which  then  had  found  a  home  in  the  Pantheon,  and 
balanced  his  devotion  by  stripping  and  carrying  off 
shiploads  of  its  metal  wealth.  The  plunder  was  com- 
pleted by  Pope  Urban  VIII.,  who  took  what  was  left 
to  build  a  gaudy  baldachino  for  a  church  and  cast  can- 
nons for  the  castle  of  San  Angelo, — four  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  pounds.  Benedict  XIV.  committed  the 
latest  spoliation,  in  taking  away  all  the  precious  marbles 
that  lined  the  vast  attic. 

Nevertheless,  so  grand  is  the  conception  of  this  build- 
ing, and  so  perfect  its  proportions,  that  you  do  not  see 
or  feel  the  loss  of  these  incidents.  The  temple  stands 
there  yet  as  it  came  from  the  brain  of  its  unknown 
architect.  You  do  not  see  the  mutilation  and  scars  of 
the  warring  centuries,  just  as  you  do  not  see  the  tawdry 
ornaments  and  wretched  tin  crowns  and  hearts  and  -<'\\- 
gaws  with  which  modern  Italian  devotion  has  desecrated 
its  altars  and  defaced  its  walls.  The  temple  crushes 
out  its  ignorant  priests  to-day,  as  it  has  defied  time 
itself  in  the  past,  and  stands  sublime  in  the  grandeur 
of  its  simplicity. 

This  most  effective  of  all  buildings  for  worship  is, 
in  its  interior,  a  simple  dome,  supported  by  a  plain, 
round  wall;  no  corridors,  no  naves,  no  transepts, — 
nothing  to  break  the  force  and  simplicity  of  idea. 
There  is  but  one  great  door,  whose  massive  bronze  folds 
close  in  with  the  line  of  the  wall  and  seem  part  of  it. 
There  are  no  windows,  but  the  light  streams  in  from  a 
great  circular  opening  in  the  centre  of  the  dome,  twenty- 
eight  feet  in  diameter,  never  closed,  flooding  every 
recess  and  every  portion  with  an  equal  ray. 

There  is  something  wonderfully  effective  in  this  idea, 


348  ROME. 

which  puts  the  temple,  as  it  were,  in  direct  communica- 
tion with  the  skies  of  heaven,  and  makes  it  already  the 
threshold  and  vestibule  of  the  other  world.  It  im- 
presses one  at  once  as  the  natural  conception  of  a  place 
of  worship.  This  world,  with  all  its  little  noise  and 
struggles,  is  utterly  shut  out  and  closed  from  you. 
You  look  up  and  see  the  clouds  with  the  birds  in  them 
sail  by.  The  rains  of  heaven  fall  on  the  porphyry  pave- 
ment at  your  feet  and  lie  there.  They  are  of  God  and 
come  into  His  house.  Or  the  warm  sunshine  streams 
in  and  rests  on  some  chosen  altar, — a  golden  pathway 
on  which  the  angels  ascend  and  descend.  In  the  night 
the  moon  and  the  stars  look  in  and  watch  with  men  the 
still  shrines  and  voiceless  tombs. 

It  is  a  temple  where  God  is  in  communion  with  man 
and  speaks  without  a  liturgy  or  formulated  ceremony. 

There  is  such  a  unity  of  effect,  with  nothing  to  dis- 
tract or  divide  attention,  it  is  so  light  and  cheerful 
and  calm  and  loving,  that  you  feel  you  are  in  the  house 
of  the  living  God  and  loving  Father,  and  not  the  God 
of  death  and  the  grave, — the  feeling  which  steals  over 
one  in  the  gloomy  shadows  of  the  Gothic  cathedral. 

It  is  a  humiliating  reflection  which  bears  down  on  me 
every  time  I  enter  the  impressive  portal  of  this  wonder- 
ful temple  that  what  is  grand  here,  what  is  elevating, 
what  is  beautiful,  is  pagan ;  what  is  false,  what  is  de- 
grading, what  is  ignorant,  is  of  our  time  and  age.  The 
religion  which  is  in  the  building  was  put  in  by  its 
classic  builders  ;  the  superstition  and  vulgarity  we  are 
responsible  for. 

I  have  attempted  to  outline  the  simple  grandeur  and 
majesty  of  this  temple  as  it  sprung  into  life, — the  best 
development  of  ancient  Roman  art  and  civilization. 
Let  us  see  how  the  priest  of  to-day  has  dealt  with  the 
finest  legacy  of  the  old  faith. 

We  will  pass  by  the  plunder  of  columns  and  marble 
and  bronze  for  private  uses, — the  deliberate  mutilation, 
the  wholesale  military  profanation  of  the  church  by 


THE  PANTHEON.  349 

bishops.  They  may  be  charged  to  the  civilization  of 
the  time,  although  a  Church  that  claims  the  temporal 
rule  of  the  world  should  be  held  responsible  for  its 
civilization. 

Let  us  inspect  the  nineteenth-century  contributions  to 
this  time-honored  temple.  As  you  enter,  the  first  un- 
pleasant sight  which  is  apt  to  catch  the  eye  is  a  dirty 
mass  of  white  and  black  drapery,  fastened  up  to  some 
pillars  just  to  the  right  of  the  main  altar.  They  are 
the  muslin  banners  and  faded,  dusty  wreaths  of  some 
civil  and  political  societies,  and  an  object  of  much  in- 
terest to  the  native  Italians  who  throng  the  temple. 
An  old  sergeant  or  veteran  in  a  half-civil,  half-military 
uniform  and  not  very  neat  or  soldierly  in  appearance  or 
carriage,  keeps  a  kind  of  slouching  guard  over  the  spot. 
This  gloomy  and  rather  shabby  pile  of  crape,  muslin, 
and  mechanical-looking  immortelles,  so  common  in 
Latin-Europe,  is  the  grave  of  Victor  Emmanuel.  It  is 
a  great  grave  in  a  great  spot,  but  we  would  make  it  far 
more  impressive  in  one  of  our  churches. 

Around  the  niches  are  paintings  of  various  scenes 
and  quality.  The  old  masters  are  not  here.  A  ghastly 
life-size  representation  of  the  crucifixion  in  some  kind 
of  dark-red  material,  with  a  crown  of  thorns  and  a  real 
white  cloth  around  the  loins,  adorns  one  panel.  A 
number  of  the  altars  have  cheap  tin  votive  offerings 
nailed  up  around  them.  Others  have  small  common 
engravings  or  prints  framed  and  hung  up  or  placed 
near  them. 

The  altar  which  attracts  most  attention,  however, 
both  from  priest  and  people,  and  before  which  one 
nearly  always  finds  some  persons  in  prayer,  is  that  of  a 
popular  Madonna, — the  third  one  from  the  left  of  the 
main  or  high  altar.  It  is  a  singular  fact  that  certain 
Madonnas  here,  sometimes  oil-paintings,  two  or  three  of 
whom  have  spoken,  and  sometimes  marble  statues,  be- 
come popular  favorites  and  the  subjects  of  great  adora- 
tion, to  the  entire  exclusion  of  their  neighbors.  There 

80 


350  ROME. 

are  several  other  Madonnas  in  the  Pantheon,  but  I  never 
saw  prayers  said  to  them,  whereas  I  have  several  times 
heard  mass  being  said  in  front  of  this  one,  and  never 
saw  her  without  some  one  kneeling  before  her. 

This  statue  is  the  altar-piece  of  an  altar  under  which 
Raphael  is  buried,  and  was  made  by  a  friend  and  pupil 
for  the  tomb  of  his  master.  It  is  a  much  finer  image, 
therefoie,  as  a  work  of  art  than  many  that  are  the 
subjects  of  popular  adoration.  Nevertheless,  this  fine 
sculpture  has  a  metal  crown  on  its  head,  a  coral  neck- 
lace on  its  neck,  and  a  tin  heart  tied  on  its  arm.  The 
marble  babe  in  the  arms  of  the  Madonna  has  also  a  gilt 
crown  and  a  petticoat  of  embroidered  gray  cloth  aroimd 
its  stone  legs.  A  rude  arch  of  tin  shapes — votive  offei> 
ings  sold  in  the  shops  for  a  penny  or  two — framed  the 
entire  altar.  Hung  up  on  the  side  of  the  niche,  over 
the  grave  of  Raphael,  were  two  or  three  most  wretched 
daubs  of  paintings,  representing  some  cures  in  a  hospi- 
tal-ward effected  by  the  miraculous  intervention  of  the 
Virgin,  and  apparently  painted  by  the  patients.  After 
saying  their  prayers  in  front  of  this  image,  the  devout 
worshippers  generally  kiss  its  feet.  A  rude  framed 
print  of  the  image  was  placed  at  its  base,  and  I  have 
seen  peasant  women  take  that  down  too  and  kiss  it  and 
teach  their  children  to  do  the  same. 

Such  is  the  altar  which  is  the  centre  of  the  nineteenth- 
century  worship  in  the  Pantheon. 

I  must  add  an  incident  illustrative  of  the  curious  con- 
dition of  mind  of  this  people,  by  reason  of  which  no 
incongruity  in  the  house  of  God  seems  to  offend  their 
taste  or  feeling,  provided  that  it  is  not  intended  as  de- 
liberate irreverence.  One  day  while  I  was  in  the  Pan- 
theon, mass  was  being  said  at  this  altar  of. the  Madonna, 
only  a  half-dozen  of  worshippers  assisting.  Inside  of 
the  chancel  of  the  main  altar,  only  a  few  yards  off  and 
very  near  its  base,  stood  an  open  flask  of  native  wine, 
half  drank.  It  belonged  to  some  workmen  who  were 
cleaning  the  rear  of  the  altar,  and  the  rasping  sound  of 


THE  PANTHEON.  351 

whose  scraping  and  sanding  mingled  with  the  intoning 
of  the  priests  at  the  adjoining  shrine,  and  was  quite  as 
audible  through  the  church.  While  the  whole  thing 
was  grating  and  offensive  to  us,  it  was  evidently  not 
meant  as  irreverence,  and  did  not  annoy  either  the  wor- 
shippers or  the  officiating  priests. 

It  is  to  be  said,  too,  for  the  credit  of  the  clergy  in 
immediate  charge  of  the  church  of  the  Pantheon,  and 
in  their  behalf,  that  the  decoration  of  the  altars  and 
walls  is  in  better  taste  and  less  offensive  than  that  of  a 
large  number  of  the  churches  of  Rome.  The  altar-fur- 
nishing is  mainly  limited  to  candles  of  plain  stylo. 
There  are  no  wax  figures,  no  <jla-s  casts,  and  no  skulls 
or  bones  or  other  horrors.  An  instinct  of  reverence, 
perhaps,  has  saved  it  from  much  of  the  trumpery  and 
tinsel,  and  gewgaws  and  frippery  images,  and  bad  mil- 
linery which  disfigure  many  other  churches  here  and 
seem  to  be  the  fitting  devotional  aids  to  the  ignorant  and 
superstitious  faith  of  the  place. 

Of  old  the  Pantheon  stood  in  an  elegant  and  spacious 
quarter  of  the  city,  and  was  raised  on  a  slight  elevation, 
which  gave  its  symmetrical  form  proper  effect.  To-dav 
it  is  found  in  the  distant  and  most  squalid  portion  of 
Rome — the  Ghetto,  from  which  it  is  not  far  off,  ex- 
cepted — and  below  thedevel  of  the  ground.  The  flight 
of  steps  by  which  it  was  originally  approached  is  buried 
absolutely,  and  you  step  down  from  the  wretched 
modern  piazza  on  to  the  floor  of  the  ancient  portico,  the 
finest  of  its  kind  in  the  world.  It  is  the  centre  of  a 
network  of  narrow  and  confusing  Roman  streets,  many 
of  them  not  the  width  of  our  alleys,  lined  continuously 
with  high  stone  buildings,  densely  packed  with  people, 
full  of  foul  smells  and  offensive  dirt  of  all  kinds.  Old 
houses  lean  up  against  a  portion  of  the  walls  and  are 
built  into  it,  and  beggars  camp  all  day  around  and 
among  its  Corinthian  columns.  During  the  Middle 
Ages  these  grand  columns  had  booths  and  stalls  built 
into  them,  and  vegetables  and  cheap  meats  were  sold 


352  ROME. 

literally  in  the  gates.  How  has  the  glory  of  the  old 
temple  departed  ! 

The  proportions  of  the  main  lines  of  this  building 
are  as  wonderful  in  their  simplicity  as  the  building  is 
itself  in  its  effect.  The  interior,  remember,  is  a  pure 
rotunda,  simply  covered  with  a  dome. 

Diameter  of  rotunda 142  feet. 

From  floor  to  top  of  dome _143    " 

Height  of  wall  of  rotunda 71J  " 

Height  of  dome 71 

or  just  one-half  of  the  whole  elevation.  The  diameter 
is  given  from  inside  measurements.  The  walls  of  the 
Pantheon  are  said  to  be  20  feet  wide.  The  great  dome 
of  St.  Peter's  is  139  feet  in  diameter  at  its  base,  3  feet 
less  than  the  Pantheon,  but  it  is  vastly  higher,  the  dis- 
tance from  the  top  of  the  cross  on  the  dome  to  the  floor 
of  the  church  being  448  feet.  It  was  Michael  Angelo's 
boast,  in  building  St.  Peter's,  that  he  would  swing  the 
Pantheon  in  the  air,  and  he  has  done  it. 

But  the  Pantheon  is  a  grander  church  than  St.  Peter's 
to-day.  It  is  a  wonder,  while  St.  Peter's  is  an  eccle- 
siastical labyrinth,  and,  greater  than  all,  it  is  the.  place 
in  which  God  has  been  continuously  worshipped  for 
nineteen  hundred  years, 

KOMI. 


OF  ST.  r.ir/.  AND  ST.  PETER.    353 


CHAPTER    XXXVIII. 


PRISON    OF   ST.    PAUL   AND  ST.    PKTKU. 


CENTUBIKS    01    I>IS^II.YI\<:    K  IN-IMOMS   AND 
FAITHS  OH  ONE  SPOT  -THE  Cow  F.USIOK  01  i!n\    ST.  PAUL 

•  AND  ST.  I'KTKU  IN  TIM:  1'm.rnr  \  i.  PRISON  I»K  UOMK  TMK 
MAMKUTIM-:  DUKOKOKB  'I'm:  Tin  i;cn  «>K  mi.  AKA  C&LI  — 
TIIK  AI.TAII  OK  TIII-:  (  'API  POL, 

WANDEBING  throagh  MM  obscure  portion  of  die  city 

to-day,  on  inv  way  for  an  altiTiiooii  <lr«'a:n  in  tho  Colos- 
seum, I  (Mine  suddenly  upon  a  rude  ou(-lioii-«-  of  some 
kind,  leaning  ap-iiusi  and  built  into  a  i'Miein  >nt  house 
for  modern  Ronians  of  the  poorer  sort,  over  liie  grated 
doorway  of  which  was  inseribed  in  still  clear,  I 
letters  ih«>  I/itin  l.-..end,  >k  I»ie-<;-d  are  t!ie  dead  who  die 
in  the  Lord."  It  was  the  enlranee  probably  to  the 
vault  of  some  ruined  and  forgot  i  en  ('lirisiian  ehurc'h 
whi<'h,  itself,  had  likely  been  built  over  and  out  of 
some  destroyed  temple  of  old,  for  it  Mood  near  and  in 
sight  of  (he  Forum.  To-day  theeheerl'u!  and  airy  tem- 
ple  of  classic  faith,  beautiful  in  svmmetrv,  proportion, 
and  graceful  Corinthian  columns,  --tin'1  j^lo-nnv  Church 
of  mediaeval  religion,  —  heavy,  dark,  and  dismal,  with 
ghastly  pictures  and  the  rude  voiivc  oilerings  of  super- 
stition, alike  are  gone,  ami  all  that  remains  of  eiiher 
serves  the  mean  use  of  eking  out  the  wretched  dwelling 
of  an  Italian  beggar. 

It  is  a  picture  of  all  Rome,  and  serves  well  as  the 
vignette  of  a  letter  which  shall  attempt  to  give  some 
faint  outline  of  a  group  of  ruins  of  mingled  religious 
and  classic  interest,  which  in  this  (  rty  of  ruins  fitly 
illustrates  the  way  in  which  the  remains  of  dilli-rent 
ages  are  merged  into  and  mixed  with  each  other. 
x  80* 


354  ROME. 

It  is  the  embarrassing  and  confusing  feature  of  the 
ruins  of  Rome  that  they  lie  massed  and  piled  and  con- 
torted one  on  another,  and  in  and  with  each  other. 
They  are  the  survivals  of  chance  and  accident  in  the 
wreck  of  centuries,  and  hold  now  neither  topographical 
nor  historical  relation  to  each  other.  You  cannot  see 
what  you  want  nor  anything  when  you  want,  but  must 
take  them  as  they  come, — -jumbled  and  piled  and  mixed, 
— Pelasgic,  Etruscan,  Roman,  and  mediseval,  in  one 
disastrous  burial  blent.  There  is  no  help  for  it  now. 
Imperial  Rome,  in  the  splendor  and  solidity  of  her 
works,  crushed  out  all  that  had  gone  before,  forcing 
into  disappearance  even  the  massive  Etruscan  masonry. 
In  later  times  degenerate  emperors  stole  from  their 
greater  predecessors,  taking  their  statues  and  arches 
and  labelling  them  with  their  own  disgraced  names, 
changing  the  sculpture,  and  altering  the  inscriptions  to 
suit.  At  times  of  civil  war,  too,  one  party,  when  suc- 
cessful, razed  to  the  ground  all  traces  of  the  trophies 
and  power  of  the  other. 

But  the  storm  of  destruction  came  in  with  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Christian  religion.  As  this  took  a 
political  form,  it  became,  of  course,  evidence  of  both 
patriotic  and  religious  fervor  to  destroy  the  temples 
and  glories  of  the  old  faith,  and  it  is  a  wonder  that  as 
much  survives  as  does.  Temples  were  everywhere  con- 
verted into  churches,  and  statues  of  the  classic  deities 
into  those  of  the  popes,  the  Virgin  Mary,  and  the  saints. 

The  wanton  and  inexcusable  destruction  took  place, 
however,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  when  popes  mid  cardi- 
nals built  great  palaces  out  of  the  temples  and  public 
buildings  of  antiquity, — when  the  walls  of  the  Colosseum 
itself  were  torn  down  to  get  the  iron  braces  out  of  them, 
— and  when  tombs  and  palaces  and  temples  were 
robbed  of  fine  statues  by  thousands,  that  they  might  be 
burned  down  for  lime.  To  the  intelligent  mediaeval 
mind  this  was  the  most  satisfactory  way  of  obtaining 
a  supply  of  iron  aad  lime.  Two  popes  at  different 


PRISON  OF  ST.   PAUL  AND   ST.   PETER.      355 

times — seized  no  doubt  with  an  attack  of  development 
— erected  manufactories  for  woollen  goods  and  saltpetre 
in  the  Colosseum  and  out  of  its  plundered  walls,  and  the 
history  of  all  Rome  is  full  of  similar  atrocities  of  van- 
dalism. 

To-day  the  most  interesting  ruins  of  Rome  lie  in  the 
dirtiest  quarter  of  the  town,  and  are  mixed  up  inextri- 
cably with  the  commonest  kind  of  dwellings  and  small 
shops,  stables  and  mean  out-houses.  The  same  piece 
of  masonry  may  be  common,  or  what  in  modern  law 
we  call  "a  party  wall,"  to  a  half-excavated  Roman 
temple  and  a  squalid  hovel  of  to-day,  recking  with 
filthy  odors,  fleas,  and  young  beggars.  Ruins,  churches, 
and  hovels,  and  sometimes  inhabited  palaces,  lip  thus 
up  against  each  other,  one  bit  of  wall  or  foundation 
representing  the  different  uses  of  successive  centuries 
far  apart.  Even  the  streets  have  been  pushed  aside  by 
the  fortunes  of  ages,  and  run  sometimes  over,  sometimes 
under,  sometimes  clambering  around,  a  pile  of  pictur- 
esque and  traditional  brick  and  marble.  When  you 
add  to  this  the  fact,  that  human  habitation  for  thou- 
sands of  years  has  gradually  raised  the  level  of  the 
surface  of  the  earth  from  thirty  to  a  hundred  feet, — 
that  all  the  Forum,  for  instance,  once  the  centre  of  mu- 
nicipal life,  is  now  reached  only  by  excavation,  and 
that  you  look  down  steep  banks  into  the  halls  where 
Roman  senators  once  walked  and  Roman  orators  ha- 
rangued the  populace, — you  have  some  idea  of  how 
utter  the  ruin  is,  and  how  fragmentary  and  piecemeal 
are  even  the  best  survivals. 

Following  up  the  rude  grate  with  its  scriptural  le- 
gend, now  diverted  to  such  thoroughly  unconsecrated 
uses,  I  found  that  the  house  to  which  it  served  as  an 
attachment  gradually  merged,  after  about  a  hundred 
feet  of  "row"  tenement  buildings  on  no  particular  line, 
but  all  closely  joined  together  by  a  kind  of  growth 
rather  than  construction,  into  the  well-known  land- 
mark, the  prison  of  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul,  when1  they 


356  ROME. 

are  said  to  have  suffered  confinement  for  nine  months. 
The  entrance  to  the  prison,  which  was  a  common  Roman 
house-front,  is  on  the  ground,  and  over  the  prison-door 
is  now  a  rude  marble  carving  representing  St.  Peter  with 
his  keys  and  St.  Paul  with  a  sword,  looking  out  of  an 
iron  grate, — something  like  the  common  bars  which 
form  the  windows  of  an  ordinary  Pennsylvania  county- 
jail.  ^ 

This  humble  building,  invested  with  such  sacred 
interest,  and  which  is  the  entrance  into  one  of  the 
ugliest  dungeons  of  history,  horrible  in  the  merciless 
ignorance  of  its  construction,  and  frightful  with  a 
record  of  weary  ages  of  atrocious  and  inhuman  cruel- 
ties, has  been  converted,  with  some  of  the  interior  cells, 
into  a  chapel  or  oratory — a  low-ceilinged  room  known 
as  the  church  of  San  Pietro  in  Carcere.  There  is  built 
over  it  and  into  the  hillside  another  church — Saint 
Joseph,  of  the  carpenters — which  answers  for  the  guild 
of  that  trade  something  of  the  purposes  of  the  ancient 
u  Carpenters'  Hall,"  of  Philadelphia.  As  the  whole  face 
of  the  hill  is  apparently  one  building,  and  the  entrance 
to  the  prison  is  almost  under  ground,  visitors  frequently 
enter  Saint  Joseph's  Church,  supposing  they  are  in  San 
Pietro  in  Carcere.  These  ugly  dungeons,  known  as 
the  Mamertine  prisons,  although  chiefly  visited  now 
for  their  religious  traditions,  have  a  historic  interest 
reaching  back  nearly  six  hundred  years  before  the  time 
of  Saints  Peter  and*  Paul.  They — or  at  least  the  first 
cells — were  built  over  five  hundred  years  before  Christ, 
in  the  kingly  period,  and  the  masonry  is  said  to  be  the 
best  specimen  of  Etruscan  work  of  the  magnitude 
extant.  Here  the  Catiline  conspirators  were  executed — 
Cicero  coming  out  of  the  prison  and  announcing  it  in 
person  to  the  people  on  the  Forum,  which  is  just  ad- 
jacent. Here,  for  a  thousand  years,  the  savage  pun- 
ishments of  Republican  and  Imperial  Rome  were  vis- 
ited on  State  prisoners,  and  the  list  of  victims  is  as 
distinguished  as  it  is  sad. 


PRISON  OF  ST    PAUL  AND  ST.    PETER.     357 

It  is  the  tradition,  and  it  seems  to  be  a  reasonable 
one,  that  Saint  Peter  and  Saint  Paul  were  both  confined 
here  awaiting  death,  and  that  from  these  gloomy  rooms 
were  written  the  Second  Epistle  of  Saint  Peter:  "  Shortly 
I  must  put  off  this  my  tabernacle;"  and  also  the  Second 
JEpistle  of  Saint  Paul  to  Timothy:  "  The  time  of  my 
departure  is  at  hand"  Saint  Peter  and  Saint  Paul 
were  both  distinguished  leaders  of  a  new  faith,  whoso 
followers  were  bound  together  by  especial  ties.  Mar- 
tyrdom was  the  highest  honor  of  the  church,  and  from 
the  very  first  the  memory  and  the  relics  of  the  martyrs 
were  preserved  with  jealous  fervor  and  handed  down 
with  pious  care — the  heirlooms  of  the  faith.  Moreover, 
during  the  early  centuries,  the  management  of  the  church 
was  more  honest  than  in  later  times.  I  had  rather 
credit  a  tradition  of  the  second  century  than  a  miracle, 
of  the  fifteenth.  -It  is  in  every  way  reasonable,  I  think, 
to  accept  this  tradition,  and  to  think  and  believe  that 
this  was  the  very  spot  of  the  sufferings  of  the  great 
apostles.  And  knowing  this,  the  situation  becomes 
intensely  dramatic,  for  whon  the  expected  martyrs 
entered  this  gloomy  prison,  ov  as  they  came  out  of  it 
for  trial  or  for  death,  they  faced,  and  saw  grouped 
around  them,  within  a  small  centre,  the  Forum,  the  cit- 
adel of  the  Capitol,  the  imperial  palace  of  justice,  the 
great  temple  of  Jupiter,  arches,  corridors  of  Corinthian 
columns,  the  temples  of  a  galaxy  of  deities — all  the 
splendor,  glories,  and  power  of  Rome  blazing  around 
them,  or  frowning  on  the  imperial  hill  close  above  them. 

Even  to-day,  from  this  little  point  of  Christian  inter- 
est, standing  in  front  of  an  obscure  chapel  as  plain  and 
modest  and  unecclesiastical-looking  as  a  prairie  Meth- 
odist meeting-house,  the  traveller  can  see  and  study  the 
historic  citadel  of  the  Capitol,  bristling  with  the  legends 
of  centuries,  the  great  Forum,  the  famous  palace  of 
the  Caesars,  the  Colosseum,  the  arches  of  Constantine, 
Septimus  Severus,  and  that  of  Titus,  with  the  ark  and 
the  golden  candle-sticks, — graven  trophies  commemo- 


358  ROME. 

rating  the  capture  c  t'  Jerusalem, — the  temple  of  the  sun, 
the  old  Roman  pavement  of  the  via  triumphalis  that  rang 
so  often  to  the  returning  tread  of  victorious  armies,  wind- 
ing now  like  a  snake  in  the  sun  by  the  ruined  columns 
that  tell  of  a  dead  faith  and  the  open  porches  of  the 
sleepy  churches  of  the  new,  and  ruins,  ruins,  ruins  re- 
ceding through  the  centuries — from  mediaeval  to  classic 
times,  from  classic  to  Etruscan,  from  Etruscan  to  pre- 
historic,— the  shadowless  morning  of  the  world. 

Retracing  our  steps  to  the  old  grated  out-house  which 
served  as  a  point  d'appui  for  our  explorations,  it  is  found 
to  be  at  the  threshold  of  a  dirty  flight  of  small  pebbled 
stairs,  which  seems  to  lose  itself  shortly  in  a  bank  of 
earth  and  ruined  brickwork.  Instead  of  being  lost, 
however,  the  staircase  only  disappears  around  the  base 
of  a  hill  to  appear  on  the  other  side  with  marble  and 
sandstone  steps,  and  turns  out  to  be  a  historic  flight. 
Up  these  steps,  centuries  before  the  birth  of  Christ,  was 
fought  many  a  stout  battle  for  the  possession  of  the 
Capitol.  On  this  hillside  had  cackled  the  sacred  geese 
of  Juno,  and  at  the  head  of  this  flight  had  stood  the 
bold  soldier  Manlius  when  he  defended  the  citadel. 
Here  for  ages  had  trodden  senators  and  generals  and 
high  priests.  To-day  they  were  hung,  not  with  tri- 
umphal banners,  but  with  dirty  washing  suspended  by 
strings  from  dilapidated  windows  and  roofs.  Unclean 
children,  goats,  and  dogs  played  together  in  the  sand  and 
pebbles.  Slovenly  women  sat  or  idly  lounged  at  the 
doors  of  the  hovels  which  clambered  up  the  hillside 
line  of  the  once  imperial  flight. 

Pushing  up  these  steps  you  come  on  an  entrance  to 
the  piazza  of  the  modern  Capitol,  flanked  on  three  sides 
with  historic  and  handsome  marble  palaces,  and  filled 
with  statuary  familiar,  and  some  of  it  clear,  to  the  art 
world.  Even  the  roofs  around  the  entire  square  are 
lined  with  ranks  of  colossal  statues  of  the  heroes  and 
great  men  of  Rome,  standing  like  sentinels  forever. 


PRISON  OF  ST.    PAUL   AND  ST.    PETVR.      359 

Resisting  the  temptation  to  loiter  here,  but  going  still 
further  on  and  up  the  picturesque  stairs,  worn  half  into 
ruin  by  the  use  of  ages,  I  came  by  a  sharp  turn  on  a 
half-hidden  side  entrance  to  one  of  the  most  striking 
and  historically  interesting  of  the  churches  of  Rome, 
the  Ara  Cceli.  It  was  a  fete  day,  and  as  I  pushed  aside 
the  heavy  leathern  curtain  which  masked  the  entrance 
a  stifling  cloud  of  incense  swept  out  into  the  air  with 
the  prayers  and  music.  Endless  wax  lights  from  altars 
in  every  direction  half  illuminated  the  vast  building, 
throwing  moving  shadows  here,  reflecting  back  there 
with  a  half  lurid  glare  from  the  scarlet-draped  columns. 
More  like  an  English  cathedral  than  a  Unman  church, 
this  building  was  crowded  with  the  tombs  and  busts  and 
names  of  the  great  dead, — nobles,  princes,  cardinals, 
pop'-s.  Every  foot  of  the  lloor  of  this  church  was 
paved  with  tablets,  elli^ies,  and  strangely  etched  stones 
covering  graves.  These  etched  pictures  were  mostly 
worn  to  barely  traceable  lines,  the  inscriptions  almost 
obliterated,  and  the  effigies  had  generally  their  noses, 
faces,  and  all  salient  limbs  worn  bare  and  flat  by  the 
feet  of  the  worshipping  multitudes  who  had  trodden 
there  for  hundreds  of  years. 

So  crowded  with  religious  associations  and  incident 
is  this  church  that  the  altar  chapels  succeed  each  other, 
without  interval,  all  around  the  three  walls,  front  and 
sides,  and  two  are  erected  around  the  pillars  of  the  nave. 
Many  of  the  altars  are  the  burial-places  of  noble  fami- 
lies, their  niches  lined  with  tablets  and  sculptured  fig- 
ures. And  well  might  religious  tradition  centre  and 
cluster  here,  for  this  Christian  church  stands  on  the 
ancient  site  of  the  great  temple  of  Jupiter  Capitoliuus 
— the  national  shrine  of  the  old  Roman  State.  It  was 
the  great  pagan  temple  which  crowned  the  Capitoline 
hill — the  heart  of  the  power  and  glory  of  Rome. 
Founded  six  hundred  years  before  Christ,  it  was  several 
times  destroyed  and  rebuilt  as  a  pagan  temple,  and, 
somewhere  about  six  hundred  years  after  Christ,  was 


360  ROME. 

finally  transmuted  into  a  Christian  chun  h — the  church 
covering  the  site  of  the  temple  of  Jupiter,  which  was 
comparatively  small,  as  were  all  the  temples,  and  also, 
as  some  authorities  say,  of  the  great  basilica,  or  court 
of  justice  of  the  capital,  and  built  out  of  their  ruins. 
To-day  the  twenty-two  great  pillars  which  form  the 
aisles  are  of  different  sizes,  shapes,  materials,  and  archi- 
tecture, showing  that  they  were  taken  from  temple  or 
palace  just  as  they  could  be  had.  This  great  basilica 
on  the  Capitol  hill — the  basilica  of  the  imperial  palace 
— was  the  judgment  hall  where  St.  Paul  stood  his  trial, 
"an  ambassador  in  bonds,"  where  he  was  condemned  to 
die,  and  from  whence  he  went  out  "  ready  to  be  offered." 
It  was  down  the  ruined  steps  we  have  ascended  that  he 
descended  into  the  dungeon  at  the  bottom  of  the  hill, 
which  was  the  vestibule  to  martyrdom.  The  Christian 
traditions  and  interest  of  the  spot  date,  therefore,  far 
back  of  its  formal  consecration  to  Christian  worship. 

This  church  of  the  Ara  Cceli,  dim  and  dingy  in  the 
fast-fading  splendor  of  centuries,  has  been  the  site  of 
human  worship  for  twenty-five  hundred  years  of  re- 
corded history.  Its  history  has  been  the  history  of 
religious  faith  and  progress  in  Rome  all  that  time. 
The  stones  in  its  walls  have  seen  sacrifices  smoking  and 
heard  prayers  ascend  to  Jupiter  for  victory.  In  sight 
of  it  in  the  long  centuries  a  great  arch  was  erected  to  Isis, 
and  crumbled  away.  Near  by  it  a  temple  arose  to  the 
sun,  and  in  the  course  of  years  was  buried  under  a  new 
city.  Almost  on  its  threshold  the  imperial  decrees  of 
Constantine,  establishing  the  civil  rights  of  Christianity, 
must  have  been  published.  To-day  it  is  the  home  and 
sacred  shrine  of  the  miraculous  image  of  the  Bambino, 
which  devout  Romans  gather  in  multitudes  to  adore. 

The  door  by  which  I  entered  the  Ara  Cceli  was  a  side 
entrance.  From  the  front  there  sweeps  down  another 
immense  flight  of  steps,  each  step  a  venerable  base  of 
worn  gray  stone.  When  the  Ara  Cosli  was  the  temple 
of  Jupiter  it  was  up  this  way  that  Julius  Ca3sar  climbed 


PRISON  OF  ST.    PAUL   AND  ST.    PETER.      ;3()j 

on  his  knees  to  return  thanks  at  the  great  altar,  smok- 
ing with  grateful  sacrifices,  for  his  Gallic  victories.  So 
even  the  devotion  of  the  Scala  Santa  has  a  pagan  pre- 
cedent. 

It  was  in  this  church — the  very  heart  of  the  history 
of  Rome,  listening  to  the  lazy  chanting  of  vespers — that 
Gibbon,  as  he  himself  tells  us,  conceived  the  idea  of 
writing  the  "Decline  and  Fall." 

The  church  has  a  further  world-wide  interest  as 
being,  with  the  convent  attached,  the  ecclesiastical  head- 
quarters of  the  Order  of  Franciscans,  the  barefooted 
friars,  followers  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisium.  The  gen- 
eral of  the  order  resides  in  this  convent,  and  the  great 
sunny  steps  leading  into  the  front  entrance  to  the  church 
are  generally  covered  over  with  unwashed,  brown- 
gowned  friars,  with  their  bare  heads  and  rope  girdles, 
and  still  dirtier  beggars  picking  up  pennies  from  tour- 
ists and  fleas  from  each  other.  In  Italy  this  is  called 
poetic  and  picturesque ;  in  our  land  it  would  simply  be 
called  filthy,  and  the  crowd  driven  off  by  a  policeman. 

In  virtue  of  the  civic  as  well  as  religious  interest  of 
this  site  and  its  traditions  the  church  of  the  Ara  Coeli 
is  the  municipal  church  of  Rome,  and  over  its  doors, 
along  with  an  image  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  is  blazoned 
the  familiar  monogram  S.  P.  Q.  R.  It  is  still  the 
altar — be  the  cultus  Christian  or  pagan — of  the  God  of 
the  Capitol. 

ROME. 


362  ROME. 


CHAPTER  XXXIX. 

THE    PALACE   OF   THE    INQUISITION. 

THE  GLOOMY  PALACK  OF  THE  HOLY  OFFICE — A  DEAF  STONE 
GRAVE  IN  THE  HEART  OF  A  MOVING  CITY — AN  INHUMAN 
CONSTRUCTION — THE  INQUISITION  AS  IT  EXISTS  TO-DAY — 
A  PRISONER  OF  THE  INQUISITION  OF  THE  NINETEENTH 
CENTURY. 

JUST  behind  that  noble  grove  of  pillars  which  forms 
the  wonderful  portico  of  St.  Peter's  and  to  the  right  as 
you  leave  the  church,  but  masked  by  some  common, 
irregular  structures,  there  arises  a  gloomy  and  forbid- 
ding pile  of  massive  masonry  known  to  Rome  as  the 
u  Palace  of  the  Holy  Office/'  This  sacred  or  sacrile- 
gious euphemism  conceals  a  celebrated  building  which 
is  looked  for  with  much  interest  by  American  visitors, 
and  regarded  with  singular  emotion  and  profound 
thankfulness  that  it  too  now  belongs  to  Rome  of  the 
past — the  Rome  of  Caligula  and  Nero  and  the  Borgias. 
For  reasons  readily  understood  it  does  not  figure  very 
conspicuously  in  the  guide-books. 

This  accursed  building,  in  which  they  killed  the 
body,  and  sometimes  the  soul,  is  an  immense  structure 
of  solid  stone-work,  nearly  four  hundred  feet  in  front. 
It  is  almost  rectangular  in  shape,  the  front  being  the 
long  side,  and  is  a  little  over  fifty  feet  in  height.  The 
outer  walls  are  many  feet  in  thickness,  and  in  places 
buttressed.  There  are  almost  no  windows  in  the  entire 
building.  The  immense  wall  of  the  north  end  is  one 
unrelieved  blank,  unbroken  by  an  opening  of  any  kind. 
The  entire  north  wing  has  but  three  small  windows, 
all  of  them  thirty-six  feet  above  the  ground,  equal  to 
the  fourth  story  of  an  average  P!iil:i<iolphia  house.  In 


THE  PALACE   OF   THE   INQUISITION.         363 

the  main  building-  there  are  a  few  windows,  grated  with 
immense  iron  bars.  In  the  south  wing  there  are  no 
windows  excepting  at  the  height  of  the  three  in  the 
northern  wing,  although  there  are  imitation  windows 
on  a  lower  floor,  so  well  constructed  and  painted  as  to 
deceive  one  at  first  into  the  belief  that  they  were  real. 
Built  into  the  back  is  the  rear  of  a  large  church,  which 
effectually  closes  up  that  side. 

For  all  ingress  or  exit  to  this  immense  and  terrible 
building  there  is  but  one  visible  door,  and  it  gave  me 
a  sensation  of  pleasure  to  see  standing  on  guard  before 
it,  with  bayonet  fixed,  a  bright-eyed,  red-cheeked 
young  soldier  of  the  army  of  Italy.  The  people  have 
confiscated  this  palace  of  atrocities,  and  it  is  now  used 
as  a  military  station^ind  barracks. 

In  the  Revolution  of  1848  the  gates  of  this  merci- 
less structure,  at  once  judgment-hall  and  prison,  were 
opened  and  the  prisoners  set  free.  I  marvel  greatly 
that  it  was  not  then  razed  to  the  ground,  for  it  was  a 
more  infamous  building  than  the  Bastile,  and  more 
justly  the  object  of  wrath  and  vengeance,  inasmuch  as 
it  had  been  blasphemously  conducted  in  the  name  of 
God.  In  1849  the  Inquisition,  as  an  institution,  was 
formally  abolished  by  the  Roman  Assembly  during  its 
brief  tenure  of  power,  but  was  re-established  by  Pius 
IX.  the  same  year  when  he  regained  his  authority. 

Victor  Emmanuel,  when  he  was  made  king,  again 
cleared  out  the  building,  and  it  may  be  a  matter  of 
some  interest  to  know  that  military  possession  was 
taken  of  it  by  the  present  king,  then  a  lieutenant-gen- 
eral in  his  father's  army.  The  Inquisition  still  sur- 
vives, however,  as  an  institution  and  court  of  the 
Roman  Church  under  Pope  Leo  XIII.  The  organiza- 
tion is  that  established  in  the  sixteenth  century, — a  body 
of  twelve  cardinals  with  the  Pope  officially  at  its  head, 
— and  its  secret  sessions  are  now  held  in  the  Vatican. 
Its  legal  title  is  Sacra  Congregatio  Romance  et  Univer- 
salis  Inquisitionis, — The  Holy  Congregation  for  the 


364  ROME. 

Inquisition  of  Rome  and  the  whole  Church.  Its  power, 
however,  is  greatly  limited  and  confined  by  the  civil 
law,  and  it  dares  no  more  arrest  a  Roman  citizen.  It 
lias  full  power,  however,  I  believe,  over  the  bishops  and 
priests  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  and  probably 
over  the  entire  population  of  the  Vatican  enclosure — 
that  curious  little  ecclesiastical  imperium  in  a  civil 
impend — which  is  too  much.  I  suppose  an  American 
priest  or  bishop  conld  be  imprisoned  here  if  he  chose  to 
come  over  and  put  his  head  in  the  tiger's  mouth. 

While  the  lowering  Palace  of  the  Holy  Office,  with 
its  deaf  stone  ears  and  voiceless  walls,  is  the  representa- 
tive monument  of  the  Inquisition,  designed  and  specially 
built  for  its  dreadful  uses,  it  htis  not  been  the  scene  of 
some  of  its  historic  crimes  most  familiarly  known  to 
the  civilized  world.  Galileo  did  not  make  within  its 
walls  his  famous  recantation  of  the  movement  of  the 
earth.  That  shameful  triumph  of  brutal  ignorance 
took  place  in  the  convent  of  the  Church  of  Santa  Maria 
Sopra  Minerva,  long  used  as  the  tribunal  and  dungeon 
of  the  Inquisition.  Bruno,  for  teaching  the  heresy  of 
the  Copernican  system,  was  not  burnt  in  its  court,  but 
in  the  Campo  de  Fiori,  a  kind  of  Roman  Smithfield, 
across  the  river,  where  the  barbarous  autos-da-fe  of 
that  time  were  customarily  held.  It  is  now  a  dirty 
market-place,  wide  and  open,  filled  with  foul  smells 
and  petty  traffic.  Savanarola  was  burnt  at  Florence. 

But  although  this  palace,  only  erected  about  1600, 
has  been  spared  some  of  the  dramatic  horrors  of  the 
history  of  the  Inquisition,  it  is  the  building  which 
must  ever  be  associated  in  the  public  mind  with  this 
institution  and  bear  its  odium, — an  odium  that  will 
grow  stronger  and  deeper  as  men  grow  gentler  and 
juster  and  more  Christian.  It  was  the  official  head- 
quarters of  the  Inquisition,  the  seat  of  the  unjust  judge, 
the  chamber  of  torture  and  of  death, — built  deliberately 
and  in  cold  blood  for  the  worst  purposes  of  the  insti- 
tution, when  it  was  at  the  height  of  its  power  and 


THE  PALACE   OF  THE  INQUISITION. 

cruelty.  I  do  not  propose  in  this  place  to  enter  into 
any  argument  as  to  the  nature  or  character  of  the  secret 
trials  of  the  Inquisition.  I  am  only  describing  the 
character  and  appearance  of  the  building  prepared  for 
its  operations, — a  building  constructed  so  that  human 
eye  cannot  see  nor  ear  hear  what  is  going  on  within  it, 
and  which  is  stronger  than  a  castle.  In  this  building 
the  most  appalling  tortures,  the  most  atrocious  murders 
might  be  carried  on  within  twenty  feet  of  a  passer-by 
on  the  street  of  a  crowded  city.  It  is  a  building  whose 
plan  and  construction  is  unholy — a  building  literally 
conceived  in  sin  and  born  in  iniquity,  and  which  has 
no  right  to  exist. 

So  much  for  the  outside  and  the  story  which  it  tells. 
I  will  let  Mr.  A.  J.  C.  Hare,  a  writer  whose  exhaust- 
ive studies  on  Rome  are  known  the  world  over,  tell  in 
a  few  brief  lines  the  story  of  the  inside : 

"  In  the  interior  of  the  building  is  a  lofty  hall  with 
gloomy  frescos  of  Dominican  saints,  and  many  terri- 
ble dungeons  and  cells,  in  which  the  visitor  is  unable 
to  stand  upright,  having  their  vaulted  ceilings  lined 
with  reeds  to  deaden  sound.  When  the  people  rushed 
into  the  Inquisition  at  the  Revolution,  a  number  of 
human  bones  were  found  in  these  vaults,  which  so 
excited  the  popular  fury  that  an  attack  on  the  Domin- 
ican Convent  at  the  Minerva  was  anticipated." 

While  these  things  add  to  the  dramatic  horrors  of 
the  place,  they  do  not  essentially  increase  its  wrong. 
To  the  Anglo-Saxon  mind  secret  trial  is  a  wrong  which 
cannot  be  very  well  made  worse.  It  is  unfair;  it  is  a 
harm  to  the  State  as  well  as  to  the  prisoner.  It  is  in 
itself  a  violation  of  law  and  a  prostitution  of  justice, 
and  a  fit  ground  for  violent  revolution.  And  it  is  just 
because  this  belief  is  grounded  in  us  we  have  no  bas-. 
tiles  and  no  inquisitions.  And  I  think  the  same  good 
day  is  coming  for  the  Romans.  It  is  customary  to 
charge  the  outrages,  moral  and  physical,  of  the  Inqui- 
sition on  the  alleged  cruelty  of  the  Italian  nature.  As 

31* 


366  ROME. 

the  Italian  people  have,  however,  within  thirty  years 
three  times  driven  out  the  institution,  it  can  hardly 
with  fairness  be  laid  to  their  doors. 

It  is  said  also  in  its  defence  that  its  terrible  and  in- 
human punishments  were  mediaeval,  and  to  be  charged 
to  the  spirit  of  the  age,  and  that  they  could  not  be  re- 
peated now  under  any  circumstances.  This  is  simply 
not  the  case.  The  claws  of  the  ecclesiastical  tiger  of 
Rome  are  cut  and  his  fangs  muzzled,  but  claws  and 
teeth  are  both  there  yet.  I  suppose  it  perhaps  would 
not  do  to  burn  an  offender  in  1880  in  the  piazza  of 
St.  Peter's  for  not  thinking  as  you  wanted  him  to,  but 
I  have  seen  a  man,  yet  comparatively  young,  who,  a 
few  years  ago,  when  Pope  Pius  IX. — who  was  claimed 
to  have  been  a  gentle  ruler — was  in  power,  was  arrested 
without  warning,  hearing,  or  being  allowed  bail,  con- 
fined in  the  Inquisition,  tried  secretly,  and  sentenced 
to  a  punishment  of  diabolic  ingenuity  and  cruelty.  He 
was  chained  to  the  bottom  of  a  flat-boat  in  the  river 
without  a  cover  day  or  night,  exposed  to  the  glare  of 
the  sun  and  the  deadly  damps  of  the  night  air.  When 
you  understand  that  the  Italian  never  walks  in  the  sun 
for  fear  of  it,  but  seeks  even  the  morning  shade  of  the 
street,  never  sleeps  with  an  open  window  for  dread  of 
the  malarial  air  from  the  Campagna,  you  see  the 
fiendish  intent  of  this  punishment.  And  most  of  the 
squad  in  this  boat  did  die,  as  they  were  meant  to, — 
burned  to  death  by  the  sun  instead  of  the  fagot,  by 
slow  torture  instead  of  quick  torture. 

The  dismantled  palace  of  the  Inquisition  is  one  of 
the  features  of  the  Rome  that  has  gone.  It  is  one  of  the 
few  monuments  that  the  world  would  not  willingly 
see  restored.  It  has  passed  into  the  dust  of  history 
only  within  living  memory,  but  its  sinister  walls  are 
already  as  admonitory  a  theatre  for  republican  musing 
as  the  debris  of  the  Forum  or  the  vanished  altars  of 
the  Pantheon, 
ROMIJ. 


CONSTANTINO'S   BATTLE-FIELD. 


CHAPTER  XL. 
OONSTANTINE'S  BATTLE-FIELD. 

IN  Hoc  SIGNO — THE  LILIPUTIAN  FACE  OF  THE  IMPERIAL 
CITY — THE  FORUM  KOMANUM — RUINS,  RUINS,  RUINS— THE 
MARBLE  PEOPLE— ON  THE  VIA  TRTOMPHALE — THE  RED 
CROSS  IN  THE  SKY. 

THIS  morning,  while  out  in  the  saddle  for  exercise,  I 
rode  over  the  battle-field  which,  sixteen  hundred  years 
ago,  decided  the  fate  of  Koine  and  the  course  of  rh( 
world's  history — that  decisive  field  over  which  hung  in 
the  sky  the  great  red  cross,  and  in  hocMcjno  led  Con- 
stantine  into  imperial  power  and  made  Christianity  the 
religion  of  the  State.  To-day  a  body  of  Bersaglieri — 
Italian  zouaves — were  being  exercised  in  skirmish  drill 
on  its  skirts,  peacefully  playing  at  arms  where  the  for- 
tunes of  the  world  had  been  staked  and  won.  It  is  so 
everywhere  here — the  tamer  uses  of  the  present  stand 
out  in  sharp  contrast  with  the  heroic  memories  of  the 
past,  which  seem  to  reprove  and  shame  them.  This 
great  battle  was  fought  in  the  peaceful  fields  but  a  few 
miles  from  the  walls,  and  its  nearness  to'  the  city  serves 
as  a  measure  of  difference  in  strategic  movements  brought 
about  by  the  use  of  firearms  and  long-range  weapons. 
To-day  this  field — the  centre  of  the  contest  in  olden 
times — would  be  but  the  outer  line  of  the  city  defences. 
Crossing  the  Tiber  on  my  way  into  Rome,  I  passed  in  by 
the  only  bridge  across  the  north  of  the  town — the  mod- 
est little  Ponte  Nolle  flowing  over  the  very  spot  where 
Constantino  threw  into  the  river  the  dead  body  of  his 
defeated  rival,  Maxentius.  It  was  in  this  battle  and  at 
this  crossing  was  lost  the  seven-branched  golden  candle- 
£tlr  k"  brought  from  the  temp] e  pf;,  Jerusalem  by  Titus. 


368  ROME. 

It  was  at  this  little  bridge,  too,  that  the  returning  envoys 
of  the  Allobrogi  were  arrested  and  the  guilty  letters 
of  the  Catiline  conspirators  found  on  them — the  letters 
that  cost  Catiline  his  head  and  brought  triumph  and 
political  success  and  honors  to  Cicero.  Attempting  to 
cross  this  bridge,  too,  General  Oudinot,  a  few  years  ago, 
met  with  a  severe  repulse,  and  the  yellow  waters  were 
crimsoned  with  French  blood.  It  is  thus  that  every 
inch  of  ground  here  has  its  successive  strata  of  historic 
associations,  and  one  cannot  help  feeling,  even  on  a 
pleasure  party  or  when  employed  in  the  pettiest  pur- 
poses of  every-day  life,  that  he  is  walking  among  the 
tombs  and  monuments  of  the  great.  Not  a  spot  here 
but  has  been  the  scene  of  heroic  struggle  and  achieve- 
ment and  sacrifice. 

Perhaps  it  is  this  very  greatness  of  its  memories, 
stretching  back  through  time  in  endless  vistas,  which 
so  dwarfs  the  impressions  of  modern  Rome  and  makes 
everything  look  and  feel  so  small  and  little.  You  look 
for  a  Roman  senator — you  see  a  dirty  friar.  Of  course, 
as  regards  physical  impressions,  the  American  eye,  from 
the  grandeur  of  our  continent,  its  mighty  mountains, 
great  lakes,  and  noble  rivers,  is  set  on  a  large  scale  and 
must  be  readjusted  to  Europe,  where  nature  has  been 
less  generous  and  has  graven  the  face  of  the  earth  in 
miniature.  The  seven  hills  of  Rome  which  rise  so 
grandly  on  our  school-books  and  boyish  imaginations, 
are  really  inconsiderable  swellings  of  the  surface  of  the 
ground.  A  night  or  two  after  my  arrival  I  attended  a 
dinner-party  at  Minister  Marsh's,  and  left  without  the 
least  idea  that  I  had  been  on  the  Esquiline  hill,  and 
that  we  had  been  drinking  champagne  in  the  classic 
precincts  where  of  old  Antony,  and  Virgil,  and  Horace, 
and  Macaenas  had  been  content  with  the  more  modest 
brands  of  Falernus,  and  thought  them  good  enough  to 
send  down  to  posterity  in  history  and  verse.  It  would 
certainly  be  dangerous  to  fall  from  the  Tarpeian  rock 
to-day,  but  there  is  nothing  appalling  in  the  baby  cliff 


.CONSTANTINO S  BATTLE-FIELD.  369 

to  an  American  eye.  I  have  a  friend  in  Colorado 
who  has  in  his  private  grounds  a  much  more  imposing 
precipice.  The  magnificent  artificial  lakes,  too,  of  clas- 
sic fame  must  have  been,  many  of  them,  mere  basins, 
or  perhaps  fountains.  The  old  Roman  highways,  the 
first  military  roads  of  history,  are  entirely  too  narrow 
for  the  march  of  a  modern  army  with  any  safety. 
Even  the  great  citadel  of  the  capitol — the  Capitoline 
hill  of  legend  and  tradition,  still  crested  with  palaces 
and  stately  with  etatued  flights  of  stairways — is  yet  a 
very  modest  elevation.  The  Pantheon  is  but  a  small 
church,  as  indeed  were  all  the  Roman  temples,  the  ser- 
vice being  sacrificial  and  conducted  by  the  priests  alone, 
or,  at  most,  sometimes  in  the  presence  of  a  few  distin- 
guished personages  of  state.  The  Tiber,  which  gleams 
like  a  golden  thread  through  all  the;  poets,  is  a  dirty, 
muddy,  unpicturesque  stream  of  inconsiderable  width, 
but  of  some  military  consequence  by  reason  of  its  depth 
and  slippery  banks.  The  Corso,  with  all  the  glamour 
which  the  carnival  has  thrown  about  it,  although  now 
the  leading  street  of  Romo,  as  in  the  days  of  imperial 
glory,  when  it  was  the  via  luta,  or  Broadway,  of  the 
capital,  is  quite  narrow  and  unimposing,  its  shops 
meagre,  its  sidewalks  wretched — one  of  those  places 
that,  if  in  Philadelphia,  would  be  thrown  up  as  a 
reproach  to  Councils,  and  adduced  as  an  instance  of  the 
inefficiency  of  Republican  administration  in  cities. 

The  Forum,  that  magnificent  theatre  which  shines  so 
splendidly  in  imagination,  is  a  space  of  very  moderate 
dimensions  as  seen  on  the  ground.  It  hardly  seems 
adequate  at  all  to  the  purposes  with  which  history  cred- 
its it.  It  is  a  lengthy  quadrilateral  area,  narrowing 
from  one  base  to  the  other.  The  extreme  landmarks, 
from  the  standing  arch  of  Severus  to  the  ruined  arch 
of  Fabius,  are  perfectly  well  known.  This  space  in- 
cludes the  comitium,  an  open  place  for  holding  mass 
meetings,  and  the  forum  proper.  Its  dimensions,  as 
given  by  Bunsen,  are  but  six  hundred  feet  in  length  by 
y 


370  ROME. 

an  average  breadth  of  say  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet. 
And  this  area,  although  probably  entirely  flagged  with 
stone  or  marble  pavement,  was  not  an  unobstructed 
space,  but  was  studded  with  public  monuments,  altars, 
columns,  tombs,  statuary,  besides  the  several  rostra,  the 
corridors  of  pillars  under  whose  shades  the  orators  and 
clients  walked,  and  the  legion  of  statues  of  the  great 
generals.  It  is  not  as  large  as  the  central  Peon  Square 
in  Philadelphia,  in  which  stands  a  single  solid  building 
whose  foundations  are  four  hundred  and  fifty  feet 
square.  Yet  Penn  Square  looks  of  modest  size  to  an  eye 
adjusted  to  the  American  range.  And  how  the  Forum 
dwindles,  too,  when  contrasted  with  that  magnificeni 
sweep  in  Paris  embracing  the  gardens  of  the  Tuilerie? 
and  the  Place  de  la  Concorde.  Much  of  the  splendor 
of  the  Forum  Romanum  undoubtedly  came  from  th^ 
grand  buildings  which  lined  its  limits,  the  shining  tem- 
ples, the  imposing  basilicas,  the  triumphal  arches,  ana 
the  overhanging  glories  of  the  Capitol  hill ;  but  allow- 
ing for  all  this,  it  could  have  never  have  compared  with 
the  grandeur  of  modern  civic  magnificence. 

To  be  sure,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  attri- 
tion of  ages  has  worn  down  the  hills,  and  that  the  con- 
tinuous wreck  of  centuries  has  levelled  up  the  surface 
of  the  ground  ;  but  still,  the  history  of  Rome  is  so  fai 
greater  than  its  physical  features  that  the  first  sight  of 
them  generally  disappoints  the  traveller.  The  altar  of 
the  world  is  a  small  one. 

Again,  the  general  impression  of  Rome  which  one 
gets  from  the  street  is  one  of  commercial  pettiness. 
Everything  exposed  for  sale  is  in  small  quantities.  The 
shops  are  petty,  and  meagre  almost  to  poverty.  There 
is  no  advertising,  no  display,  nothing  of  any  kind  to 
indicate  that  business  is  being  carried  on  on  a  broad  or 
generous  scale,  or  with  any  amount  either  of  capital  or 
stock  of  goods.  With  the  exception  of  a  few  of  the 
leading  stores,  the  shops  are  such  as  one  sees  in  Phila- 
delphia and  New  York  in  the  poorer  streets.  The 


CONSTANTINE'S  BATTLE-FIELD.  371 

wholesale  feature  of  trade  is  entirely  absent.  Men 
work  for  small  ends  in  a  small  way. 

In  fact,  Italy,  as  well  as  all  Continental  Europe,  lives 
by  small  economies. 

It  is  the  lesson  which  we  must  learn  in  America,  and 
have  been  learning  latterly  by  severe  experience ;  and 
it  is  wonderful  how  much  it  means  for  the  poor  man  or 
person  of  moderate  means.  These  people  here  abso- 
lutely live  on  what  we  throw  away.  For  instance,  beef 
here,  wholesale — a  "dressed  beef  or  a  quarter  of  it — is 
more  costly  than  in  Philadelphia  or  New  York ;  but 
the  steak  raw,  from  the  .small  butcher- shop,  or  cooked, 
from  the  restaurant,  costs  less  than  with  us.  The  saving 
is  in  the  division,  in  the  consumption  of  every  portion, 
and  in  the  absence  or  strict  limitation  of  the  profits  of 
middlemen.  Everything  is  counted  to  the  centime  (the 
one-fifth  part  of  our  cent),  in  which  figure  all  petty 
amounts  are  kept. 

The  benefit  of  this  severe  economy  to  the  whole 
community  is  seen  in  the  large  number  of  Americans 
and  English  people  of  moderate  means  who  come  here 
to  live.  While  residence  here  temporarily,  or  for  those 
whose  tastes  or  calling  compel  them  to  associate  with 
people  of  distinction  or  influence,  is  as  expensive  as  in 
most  other  places,  those  who  come  to  reside  perma- 
nently, and  to  live  quietly  and  rather  obscurely,  can  do 
so  with  great  comfort  on  incomes  which  would  not 
support  bare  life  in  America.  The  things  which  are 
lavish  here  are  the  luxuries  of  culture. 

There  is  a  profusion  of  art  and  ruins,  which  cannot 
be  described.  The  heavens  seem  to  have  rained  down 
sculpture  and  statuary  on  the  favored  city.  There  are 
statues  of  the  great  dead  of  history  and  tradition,  of 
Christian  and  pagan,  and  legendary  fame,  by  thousands 
and  thousands.  Whole  galleries  and  corridors  are  lined 
with  them.  Parks  and  public  grounds  and  fountains 
and  squares  and  courts  are  thronged  with  a  marble 
population,  while  the  hundreds  of  churches  are  all 


372  ROME. 

stately  and  imposing,  with  a  wealth  of  stone  effigies, 
angels  and  archangels,  warriors,  popes,  cardinals,  and 
princes.  Out  the  Appian  Way  mutilated  statues,  like 
voiceless  sentries,  stand  guard  over  the  unknown  dead 
of  unknown  lands  for  miles.  You  cannot  dig  the 
foundations  of  the  commonest  house  but  you  come  on 
ruins,  and  these  ruins  may  be  rare  and  costly  marbles. 
In  fact,  there  are  people  here  who  "prospect"  the  soil 
for  antiques  and  marbles,  just  as  in  Nevada  or  Cali- 
fornia they  prospect  for  gold  mines.  Statuary,  a  single 
piece  of  which  in  our  land  would  be  the  central  feature 
of  a  millionaire's  residence,  is  here  found  in  the  most 
out-of-the-way  places,  and  consigned  to  the  commonest 
uses.  In  the  house  where  I  lodge,  for  instance, — not  a 
palace  now  or  ever,  but  the  dwelling  of  a  citizen  of  the 
middle  class, — the  landings  on  the  stone  stairways  are 
adorned  with  old  Roman  tombs;  and  all  the  time,  in 
some  new  niche  or  corner,  I  come  on  a  burial-urn,  an 
inscription,  or  piece  of  sculpture ;  while  over  the  inner 
court  of  the  garden  a  bust  of  Domitian  frowns  all  day, 
and  looks  miserable  when  it  rains. 

According  to  an  official  Roman  record  preserved, 
there  were,  A.  D.  540,  in  Rome  22  great  equestrian 
statues  in  bronze,  of  which  only  one  remains  to-day, 
66  ivory  statues  of  the  gods,  80  gilt  statues  of  the  gods, 
of  which  only  one  remains,  and  no  less  than  3785 
statues  of  emperors  and  generals  in  bronze.  Now,  of 
these  nearly  4000  great  bronzes  only  the  very  slightest 
number  have  survived,  while  we  have  thousands  of 
marble  statues  which  apparently  were  too  common  to 
be  enumerated.  What  must  have  been  the  marble 
wealth  of  Rome,  distributed  in  her  17,097  palaces  and 
13,052  fountains  and  39  theatres  and  9DOO  baths  of 
that  date,  and  in  her  numberless  temples  and  wealthy 
private  houses !  It  was  a  marble  population  as  great 
as  that  of  many  a  busy  and  ambitious  American  city 
of  our  day, — say  Hartford,  or  Nashville,  or  Omaha,  or 
Denver.  And  this  classic  population  was  not  confined 


CONSTANTINO S  BATTLE-FIELD.  373 

to  imperial  Rome,  but  was  spread  over  all  Italy,  even 
to  such  purely  commercial  points  as  the  shipping-port 
of  Ostia.  This  was  the  legacy  which  pagan  civilization 
left  to  the  keeping  of  the  mediaeval  Church. 

It  is  a  curious  fact,  too,  that  while  thousands  of  dol- 
lars are  spent  annually  in  the  restoration  of  classic 
ruins,  the  ruin  of  to-day  goes  steadily  on.  Churches 
are  frequently  falling  into  decay.  Old  arches  and  gate- 
ways and  walls  that,  a  few  centuries  ago,  defended 
their  owner's  landed  premises,  are  now  peacefully  fall- 
ing down  around  farm-fields,  mortified,  perhaps,  in 
their  decayed  gentility  at  their  lowered  fortunes. 
Even  the  faith  of  the  hour  cannot  preserve  its  shrines. 
Riding,  the  other  day,  out  the  Via  Triomphalc,  only 
five  or  six  miles  from  the  city,  and  on  the  open  high- 
way, I  came  on  an  abandoned  roadside  altar  that,  within 
only  a  few  years,  had  been  one  of  some  pretensions 
The  bent  cross  had  fallen  from  the  top  of  the  arched 
niche,  the  lamp — its  light  gone  out  for  ever — lay  un- 
tended  and  untouched,  the  once  brilliant  frescos,  de- 
picting in  life-size  figures  the  Crucifixion,  were  being 
washed  out  by  the  rain.  The  glass  and  iron  which 
had  protected  the  shrine  were  bent  and  broken.  There 
was  no  sacrilegious  hand  to  mutilate  or  de-face  the  con- 
secrated spot,  but  there  was  none  to  tend  or  protect. 
The  service  was  over,  the  worshippers,  were  gone;  the 
faith  of  old  had  fled,  and  all  this  with  a  church  almost 
in  sight  and  the  fallen  shrine  itself  built  into  the  high 
walls  of  a  pile  of  substantial  farm-buildings.  I  reined 
up  my  horse,  to  look  and  think,  before  a  Christian  altar, 
forgotten,  as  desolate,  and  silent,  and  abandoned  of 
human  heart  and  prayer,  as  if  it  had  been  in  Thebe? 
or  Carthage,  and  all  in  sight  of  St.  Peter's  great  dome. 

Yes,  in  Rome  itself,  on  this  spot  which  has  seen  the 
dissolution  of  the  greatest  systems  of  human  thought 
and  human  power,  ruin  is  at  this  hour  the  law  and 
order  of  the  day.  The  Church,  its  hold  on  the  confi- 
dence and  trust  of  the  people  gone,  is  even  now  but  a 

32 


374  ROME. 

historic  "  survival,"  a  picture  slowly  dissolving  in  the 
approaching  rays  of  some  new  dispensation,  and  the 
civil  government  of  Italy,  in  common  with  those  of  all 
Europe,  visibly  trembles  under  the  volcanic  rumblings 
of  Red  Republicanism.  The  red  cross  of  Constantino 
is  in  the  sky  again. 
HOME. 


CHAPTER  XLI. 

OSTIA. 

A  BURIED  CITY — THE  LOST  SHIPPING-POUT  OF  THE  ANCIENT 
WORLD — CAMPO  MORTO — IN  THE  WASTE  OF  THE  MAREMNA 
— ANCIENT  ROMAN  CIVILIZATION — AN  ITALIAN  POMPEII— IN 
THE  WILDERNESS  AND  DESERT  ON  THE  CONFINES  OF  HOME — 
MEDIEVAL  OSTIA — THE  SARACEN  IN  ITALY. 

THIS  week,  in  company  with  a  New  England  author 
held  in  honor  in  Europe  no  less  than  his  own  country, 
I  drove  down  to  the  buried  seaport  of  Ostia,  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Tiber,  to  spend  a  day  among  its  ruins. 
It  was  our  purpose  to  visit  this  locality  at  our  leisure, 
and,  by  a  somewhat  careful  examination  of  the  ground 
in  person,  establish  clearly  to  our  own  minds  the  out- 
lines and  lost  physical  features  of  what  was  once  the 
first  commercial  metropolis  of  the  world,  and  that,  too, 
at  that  splendid  time  when  its  imperial  dominion  cen- 
tered in  Rome. 

This  lost  and  ancient  city,  now  seated  in  the  heart  of 
pestilential  swamps,  and  apart  from  any  line  of  civil- 
ized travel,  is  rarely  visited,  although  it  has  been  the 
theatre  of  much  critical  study,  and  vast  sums  of 
money  have  been  spent  on  it,  from  time  to  time,  in 
intelligent  archaeological  explorations.  It  is,  however, 
a  most  interesting  spot,  and  eloquent  with  the  lessons 
of  history.  In  fact,  its  mute  ruins  give  a  vividness 
and  color  to  our  conception  of  the  busy  life  and  an- 


OSTTA.  375 

tivities  of  imperial  Rome  which  you  do  not  get  in  Rome 
itself. 

Ostia  was  the  seaport  of  Rome,  the  Tiber  at  Rome 
itself  furnishing  no  facilities  for  extensive  wharfage 
or  the  reception  of  vessels  of  large  draught.  At  the 
flush  period  of  the  Roman  power  it  was  the  Liverpool 
of  the  world.  It  was  greater  than  Liverpool,  for  it 
was  the  shipping  city  of  the  world  at  a  time  when 
there  were  no  railways  t>r  telegraphs.  It  was,  for 
many  centuries,  the  point  from  which  the  great  Roman 
expeditions  to  conquer,  one  after  another,  the  countries 
of  the  known  world  debarked.  From  here  Scipio 
Africanus  sailed  with  his  fleet  for  Spain,  and  Claudius 
for  Britain,  and  by  this  shore  long,  long  before,  ^Eneas 
had  sailed  up  the  "yellow"  tide.  From  here  for  hun- 
dreds of  years  set  out  the  fleets  of  many  oared  merchant- 
men for  Carthage  and  Corinth  and  Tyre  and  Sidon. 

To-day  this  city,  once  throbbing  with  the  commerce 
of  the  world,  and  floating  its  triumphant  navies,  is 
absolutely  abandoned,  desolate,  and  silent.  Human 
life  has  left  it.  The  degenerate  Rome  of  to-day  hardly 
knows  where  it  is,  forgot  ting  it,  with  its  hundreds  of 
other  forgotten  glories,  and  even  the  Tiber  has  changed 
its  banks  and  deserted  it.  It  lies  under  Around  and 
under  water  in  the  centre  of  a  deadly  waste.  This 
mal-aria  is  known,  in  the  picturesque  tongue  of  Italy, 
as  the  Carnpo  Morto;  so  fatal  is  its  breath  that  it 
is  popularly  believed  to  be  death  for  a  traveller  to 
spend  a  night  at  Ostia.  And,  even  before  the  shades 
of  night  fall,  the  passing  stranger  shudders — with  good 
reason — as  he  sees  spectral  arms  of  pale  mist  stretch- 
ing out  from  the  marsh  to  clasp  him  in  their  deadly 
embrace.  These  fever-swamps  that  engulf  the  long- 
doomed  town  stretch  into  dense  forests  of  stone-pine, 
mingled  with  thick  underbrush  and  thickets,  through 
which  roam  buffalo  and  wild  boar.  And  all  this  within 
twenty  miles  of  the  gates  of  Rome  ! 

That  an  absolute  wilderness  should  exist  within  a 


376  ROME. 

few  miles  of  a  great  city  like  this  is  something  almost 
incredible  to  an  American  mind.  Yet  so  it  is.  There 
being  no  public  conveyance  in  this  direction,  we  hired 
a  private  wagon  and  driver,  and  set  out  under  our  own 
leadership  and  guidance.  The  driver  Jiad  never  been 
to  Ostia,  and  did  not  know  where  it  was,  and  we  ex- 
plored our  way  through  guide-books  and  maps.  The 
road  was  sufficiently  bad ;  at  times,  however,  the  sur- 
face of  the  old  Roman  "  way"  came  to  the  ground,  its 
massive,  irregular  stone  blocks  giving  us,  at  any  rate, 
a  substantial  foundation. 

Leaving  Rome,  for  about  two  miles  we  had  a  pleasant 
entourage  of  farms  and  fields.  This,  I  believe,  is  a 
rather  modern  reclamation,  the  whole  interval  between 
Rome  and  Ostia  having  been  for  centuries  a  desert. 
These  few  farms,  however,  seemed  to  feel  themselves 
on  the  frontier  of  life  and  near  the  confines  of  the  land 
of  death.  There  was  a  stillness  and  want  of  motion 
that  seemed  lethargic,  and  almost  oppressed  yon,  even 
passing  through  it.  There  were  a  few  closed  chapels 
and  some  abandoned  wayside  altars  falling  to  ruins. 
Every  haystack  was  surmounted  with  a  cross,  as  if 
appealing  to  heaven.  At  about  the  extreme  limits  of 
cultivation  there  is  a  monastery,  which,  however,  the 
monks  desert  in  the  summer,  fleeing  for  their  lives. 
In  the  winter  they  inhabit  their  possessions  with  com- 
parative safety,  tending  some  good  vineyards,  and,  I 
suppose,  the  chapels  of  the  vicinage.  Under  the 
stimulus  of  modern  science  they  have  recently  under- 
taken the  cultivation  of  the  eucalyptus  tree,  which  they 
raise  in  groves,  and  from  which  they  manufacture  a 
liquor  which  is  claimed  to  be  a  useful  preventive 
against  the  malaria  and  fevers. 

Very  soon  this  meagre  life  died  away,  and  we  were 
in  a  desert,  with  the  domes  and  campaniles  of  Rome  in 
sight.  From  here  to  Ostia  we  rode  through  a  dreary 
waste — dismal,  silent,  and  barren  of  cultivation.  The 
soil  is  good  enough  if  reclaimed  from  the  malarial 


OSTIA.  377 

swamps,  but  man  has  given  it  up.  The  swamps,  which, 
even  in  the  time  of  Troy,  were  known  as  unhealthy, 
had  been  abandoned  in  modern  times  entirely,  and  had 
become  a  refuge  for  criminals  and  convicts.  Here  and 
there  a  straw  hut,  not  any  better  than  our  Indian 
wigwam,  attested  the  solitary  presence  of  some  outcast 
or  waif-life,  but  even  these  were  few  and  far  apart. 
Within  very  recent  years — since  the  government  has 
undertaken  the  work  of  systematic  exploration  at  Ostia 
— this  kind  of  thing  has  been  broken  up,  and  travel  is 
safe  enough,  although  there  has  been  one  known  case 
of  brigandage  this  spring. 

The  sharp  contrast  comes  when  one  remembers  that 
centuries  and  centuries  ago  this  desolated  waste  over 
which  we  rode  was  smiling  with  villas,  the  homes  of 
opulence  and  cultivation.  History  tells  us  that  there 
was  once  a  time  when  Ostia,  with  its  eighty  thousand 
of  inhabitants,  was  an  actual  suburb  of  Rome,  the 
distance  between  the  two  being  an  unbroken  line  of 
country  houses  and  residences,  built  on  a  scale  of 
luxury  and  magnificence  which  has  never  been  equalled 
anywhere  or  at  any  time  else  in  the  world.  The 
classic  writers  speak  of  the  "great  mountains  of  white 
marble"  seen  far  out  on  the  sea  which  guarded  this 
avenue  of  nations  to  the  imperial  city. 

The  Ostia  which  students  go  to  see  and  savants  to 
explore  to-day  is  a  town  of  twofold  corporeal  shape — 
old  Ostia  and  new  Ostia.  Both  are  gone,  and  are  to 
be  seen  only  in  their  ruins.  The  one  is  a  wreck  of 
Roman  greatness,  pagan  and  imperial  ;  the  other,  of 
Roman  power,  mediaeval  and  Christian. 

It  is  of  old  Ostia  that  I  have  been  speaking  so  for, 
which  to-day  is  simply  a  rough  surface  of  field,  broken 
by  tumuli  and  ridges.  Cropping  out  of  this  surface  at 
odd  intervals  you  see  broken  bits  and  masses  of  massive 
brick  masonry,  the  surviving  remnants  of  arches  and 
temples  and  forums  and  tombs.  In  the  sheltered 
niche  of  a  storm-beaten  and  crumbling  brick  archway 

32* 


378  ROME. 

over  the  imposing  gate  of  the  city  we  fell  suddenly 
upon  a  half-wild  bitch,  of  Campagna  breed,  with  a 
litter  of  pups — the  only  resident  of  the  once-powerful 
city.  She  looked  as  much  startled  as  we  were,  but, 
after  a  growl  or  two,  settled  down  to  friendship,  and 
was  perhaps  glad  of  an  incident  to  break  the  unevent- 
ful monotony  of  the  wilderness. 

Excavations  at  Ostia  have  been  made  during  recent 
years  on  a  large  scale  and  in  an  intelligent  and  judicious 
manner.  They  are  of  peculiar  historic  value,  as,  the 
story  of  the  city  being  so  well  known,  they  cannot  be 
used  to  support  theories  or  vague  conjectures,  but 
become  illustrative  evidence  of  fixed  history.  Ostia 
was  also  a  purely  Roman  city.  Its  remains  are  the 
remains  of  a  purely  Roman  civilization,  unembarrassed 
by  any  Etruscan  or  Grecian  admixture,  and  they  reveal 
in  vivid  form  a  perfect  picture  of  the  daily  life  of  ancient 
Roman  society.  Excavations  have  been  made  which 
develop  not  only  temples  and  baths  and  public  build- 
ings and  detached  walls,  but  long  lines  of  streets  enter- 
ing into  each  other,  and  in  one  district  running  down 
to  the  once-busy  wharves.  You  can  walk  on  the  streets 
in  which  these  people  walked,  and  enter  the  houses  in 
which  they  lived,  see  the  frescos  on  the  walls  which 
their  eyes  enjoyed,  and  go  up  the  stairs  by  which  they 
ascended  to  the  upper  floors  of  their  dwellings.  You 
see  the  ruts  of  their  chariot  wheels  in  the  Roman  pave- 
ment of  the  streets.  Going  down  to  the  wharf,  you 
find  their  commission-houses  and  shipping-offices.  All 
around  you,  in  vast  quantities,  lie  fragments  of  pottery 
— the  remains  of  the  vessels  and  utensils  they  used. 
This  pottery  is  generally  coarser  and  embellished  with 
le^s  ornamentation  than  that  found  in  the  ruined  Azteo 
cities  of  New  Mexico  and  Arizona.  You  may  tread 
the  forum  where  they  met  for  business  and  exchange; 
the  temple  where  they  gathered  for  worship — too  bare, 
however,  of  altar  or  image  to  know  whom  they  wor- 
shipped ;  the  baths,  the  great  luxury  of  Roman  life;  the 


OSTIA.  379 

theatre  where  they  sat  for  pleasure  and  relaxat  >n.  You 
may  go  farther  back  up  the  hill,  and  meditate  for  half 
a  mile  ariiong  the  tombs  where  they  buried  their  dead. 

Of  course,  but  a  small  portion  of  the  vast  city  is 
excavated,  but  enough  is  laid  bare  to  give  one  a  full 
idea  of  its  daily  walk  and  manner  of  life.  The  streets 
run  in  the  same  curving,  irregular  lines  as  those  of 
Rome  to-day,  and  are  equally  narrow.  The  ceilings 
are  high,  just  as  in  the  palaces  of  Rome  to-day — the 
same  climatic  conditions  producing  the  same  results. 
The  warmer  and  more  delightful  the  climate  the  higher 
the  ceiling  everywhere,  and  the  colder  and  moister  the 
climate  the  lower  the  ceiling,  as  in  Holland,  England, 
and  other  northern  countries. 

The  colors  of  the  frescos  here  are  as  bright  as  at 
Pompeii ;  the  rooms  higher,  and  the  stairways  quite  a 
marked  feature,  the  Greek  traditions  which  conditioned 
the  architecture  of  Pompeii  not  conducing  to  high 
buildings. 

Although  a  shipping-port  and  known  only  for  its 
commercial  traditions,  Ostia  was  the  home  of  great 
culture  and  taste,  and  her  citizens  must  have  been 
largely  people  of  cultivation  and  refinement.  Some  of 
the  finest  treasures  of  antique  statuary  have  been  ex- 
humed from  these  rooms, — exquisite  works  of  art  that 
the  average  well-to-do  citizen  of  Liverpool  or  an  Ameri- 
can manufacturing  town  would  hardly  appreciate.  In 
fact,  the  Vatican  is  full  of  them,  a  great  portion  of  the 
excavations  having  been  done  under  Pius  V.  And 
not  only  statuary,  but  tombs  of  masterly  designs,  sar- 
cophagi, carvings,  mosaics,  etc.  Noted  among  these 
rescued  treasures  are  the  familiar  bust  of  the  young 
Augustus,  the  Ganymede  of  Pha3dimus,  and  bas- 
reliefs  of  Endymion  and  Diana.  In  fact,  the  reve- 
lations of  Ostia  are  conclusive  evidence  of  the  very 
great  culture  of  the  Roman  people  as  a  whole.  This 
city  was  but  an  ordinary  business-town,  not  pretending 
to  any  literature  or  art  reputation,  but  its  treasures  are 


380  ROME. 

rare  in  quality  and  wonderful  in  number.  The  Ostian 
merchant  of  eighteen  hundred  years  ago  would  have 
looked  with  curious  contempt  on  the  American  million- 
aire of  to-day  furnishing  his  house  witli  chromos  or 
auction-room  paintings,  or  engravings  bought  on  the 
recommendation  of  a  salesman.  All  this 'is  the  more 
wonderful  when  we  remember  that  the  cost  of  works  of 
art  was  about  equal  to  what  it  is  now.  A  fairly  good 
statue  of  full  life-size  cost  $150,  while  a  work  of  Phidias 
or  Praxiteles  brought  $10,000  to  $30,000.  But  to 
understand  these  values  we  must  recollect  that  a  slave 
could  be  kept  for  about  ten  cents  a  day,  and  that  beef 
could  be  bought  in  the  markets  for  four  cents  a  pound. 

It  is  a  humiliating  contrast  between  classic  and  mod- 
ern civilization,  that  for  hundreds  of  years  the  rude 
lime-kilns  in  the  woods  around  Ostia  have  been  slip- 
plied  with  sculptures  from  the  ruins  to  make  lime  for 
Roman  peasants,  and  Roman  princes  and  cardinals,  too, 
at  times,  I  suspect. 

The  approach  to  Ostia  to-day  is  a  very  pathetic  remi- 
niscence of  past  cultivation  and  grandeur.  You  cross 
the  fatal  Maremna,  which  here  sinks  into  a  watery 
marsh  to-day,  but  in  past  times  may  have  been  flooded 
with  the  healthy  waves  of  the  sea,  by  a  solid  causeway 
of  hard  Roman  pavement,  built  on  piles  and  protected 
on  each  side  by  a  low  wall  or  railing  of  stone  and 
marble.  All  along  this  causeway  of  over  a  mile  in 
length,  abandoned  for  centuries,  half  hidden  by  the 
reeds  and  thistles  or  half  sunken  in  the  poisonous  marsh, 
stand  on  either  side  forgotten  ranks  of  marble  statues, 
— vanished  gods,  limbless  heroes,  headless  queens  and 
ladies,  worn  and  time-stained  senators.  Some  are 
fallen,  some  are  leaning,  all  are  forsaken.  And  this 
imperial  approach,  impressive  even  in  its  abandonment, 
leads  up  to  a  wretched  Roman  trattoria,  the  refuge  of 
outcasts  and  petty  brigands. 

One  of  the  marked  features  of  the  walls  of  Ostia, 
both  interior  and  outside,  is  the  variety  of  pleasing 


OSTIA.  381 

effects  worked  out  by  the  simple  use  of  brick,  both  in 
form  and  color — the  very  same  effects  within  late  years 
so  largely  introduced  into  the  United  States. 

Ostia  is  lovingly  remembered  in  Christian  tradition 
as  the  home  of  St.  Augustine,  and  the  place  where  he 
parted  with  his  mother,  Monica,  to  bear  the  gospel  to 
Saxon  England. 

Being  the  harbor  and  port  of  Rome,  Ostia  bore  the 
brunt  of  all  attacks  made  by  sea,  and  her  traditions  are 
largely  those  of  warfare  and  the  repulse  of  pirates. 
At  last,  in  the  fifth  century,  she  was  utterly  destroyed 
by  the  Saracens  and  razed  to  the  ground.  So  utter  was 
the  ruin  that  no  attempt  was  ever  made  to  rebuild  the 
town  ;  but  three  hundred  years  later  another  town  was 
laid  out  about  a  mile  away  from  the  river  and  became 
a  place  of  importance  and  interest.  This  was  mediaeval 
Ostia,  known  to-day  as  "  the  new  town."  Here  began 
again  the  fighting  with  the  pirates,  and  the  old  Middle 
Age  fortifications  yet  extant  tell  the  story  very  graphi- 
cally. That  stalwart,  fighting  Pope,  Julius  II.,  when 
a  cardinal,  built  here  a  castle  so  massive  and  secure  that 
it  yet  stands  in  all  its  original  strength,  and  is  one  of 
the  best  illustrations  of  mediaeval  military  life  which 
has  come  down  to  us.  This  compact  little  fortress  is 
a  capacious  round-tower — a  perfect  circle — surrounded 
by  bastions,  which  are  linked  with  a  curtain,  and  the 
whole  encompassed  by  a  wide  and  deep  ditch.  It  is  ex- 
tremely picturesque,  and,  as  it  stands  on  level  ground, 
was  capable  of  indefinite  defence  in  a  time  when  it  could 
only  be  taken  by  land.  Nevertheless,  the  besieged  were 
safe  only  by  sleepless  vigilance.  Half  an  hour's  care- 
lessness would  have  let  in  the  enemy. 

For  hundreds  of  years  these  castles  and  towers  of 
Ostia — for  there  were  others  of  them — maintained  this 
fluctuating  and  eventful  warfare  with  Cilician  pirates 
and  Saracenic  armies;  but  at  last,  in  the  utter  exhaust- 
ion which  marked  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries, 
here,  its  life  flamed  away,  and  they,  too,  lay  down  in 


382  ROME. 

ruin  and  weariness.  We  picked  our  way  through  a 
marshy  and  treacherous  plain  that  once  was  bright  and 
brilliant  with  the  tents  of  the  Saracen  ;  under  decadent 
forests  that  not  many  hundred  years  ago  had  heard  the 
evening  prayers  of  the  Moslem.  To-day  an  exhausted 
Koman  workman  or  two  scraping  gently  on  the  edges 
of  an  endless  mass  of  ruin,  a  frightened  wild  animal,  a 
wretched  peasant,  the  child,  perhaps,  of  a  convict,  and 
born  in  a  land  of  death,  were  all  there  was  to  break  the 
melancholy  solitude.  Yet,  after  all,  how  much  better 
than  that  the  Turk  should  have  succeeded  in  fixing  a 
European  camp  here  as  well  as  on  the  Black  Sea ! 

It  is  almost  impossible  for  an  American  mind  to  con- 
ceive that  here,  within  twenty  miles  of  Rome,  the  altar 
of  the  learning  and  culture  of  the  world,  there  is  a  wil- 
derness as  silent,  as  savage,  as  desolate,  as  on  the  empty 
plains  or  our  untrodden  frontier,  where  buffalo  and  wild 
game  range  undisturbed;  a  sanctuary  for  criminals — if 
there  were  anything  to  tempt  crime  or  plunder;  a  soli- 
tude that  seems  abandoned  of  man  and  of  God.  And 
it  is  a  solitude,  too,  oppressive  and  stifling  and  appall- 
ing— for  it  is  the  silence  of  death  and  the  grave,  and 
not  like  the  fresh  solitudes  of  our  Western  prairies,  the 
stillness  of  the  morning. 

Yet  listen  to  Pliny  as  he  pictures  the  scene  of  this 
malarial  desert  nearly  two  thousand  years  ago  :  "  Such 
is  its  happy  and  beautiful  amenity  that  it  seems  to  be 
the  work  of  rejoicing  Nature.  For  truly,  so  it  appears 
in  the  vital  and  perennial  salubrity  of  its  atmosphere, 
in  its  fertile  plains,  sunny  hills,  healthy  woods,  thick 
groves,  rich  varieties  of  trees,  breezy  mountains,  fertil- 
ity in  fruits,  vines,  and  olives ;  its  noble  flocks  of  sheep, 
abundant  herds  of  cattle,  numerous  lakes,  and  wealth 
of  rivers  and  streams  pouring  in  upon  it;  many  sea- 
ports, in  whose  lap  the  commerce  of  the  world  lies, 
and  which  run  largely  into  the  sea,  as  it  were,  to  help 
mortals." 

BOMB. 


MODERN  ITALY. 


CHAPTER  XLIL 

NEW   ROME. 

THE  CITY  OF  THE  NEW  QUARTER — THE  UNION  ARMY  OF  ITALY 
AND  ITS  CIVIL  USES— MODERNIZATION  OF  ROME — CONVENTS 
AS  GOVERNMENT  BUILDINGS  —  UNMUZZLKD  BOOKSTORES — 
POLITICIANS  AND  ENGINEERS — THE  AMERICAN  CHURCH- 
THE  PROTESTANT  GRAVEYARD. 

NOT  the  least  among  the  astonishing  sights  of  this 
famed  and  ancient  city,  and  certainly  the  most  unlocked 
for,  is  the  New  Rome  that  is  arising  every  day  strong 
and  beautiful,  clean  and  hygienic  and  lusty. 

This  is  an  entirely  new-built  section,  where  every- 
thing is  modern,  fresh,  and  recent.  Whole  streets  of 
newly-erected  houses  meet  one's  view,  the  streets  them- 
selves wide  and  straight,  well  graded,  and  handsomely 
laid  out,  and  the  whole  is  of  a  few  years'  growth.  It 
is  such  a  quarter  and  development  as  one  would  ex- 
pect to  find  in  Cincinnati  or  Chicago,  but  the  last  thing 
looked  for  in  Rome.  The  buildings  in  this  new  quar- 
ter are  not  architecturally  handsome,  i  he  houses  are 
very  large,  rectangular  structures,  affording  only  plain, 
straight  lines  to  the  eye.  They  are,  however,  palaces 
in  their  spaciousness,  being  very  broad,  the  fronts 
measuring  from  fifty  to  one  hundred  feet,  and  as  high 
in  elevation  as  the  best  blocks  in  our  cities.  They  are 
convenient  to  live  in,  but  not  picturesque  structures, 
and  although  entirely  different  in  construction  from  the 
American  dwelling-house,  the  long  succession  of  them, 
all  of  the  same  style  and  pattern,  gives  the  effect  of  an 
American  street.  They  are  also  as  devoid  of  historical 
interest  or  association  as  the  wooden-paved  u  avenues" 
of  a  ten-year-old  Western  metropolis.  This  new  city 
lies  from* the  Baths  of  Diocletian  to  the  Esquiliiie  JJiJJ 

R         z  83  385' 


386  MODERN  ITALY. 

and  extending  back  to  the  walls,  taking  in  all  the 
ground  from  the  Porta  Pia  to  the  Porta  Maggiore. 
The  backbone  of  the  section  is  the  broad  Via  Nazionak, 
running  from  the  new  railway  station  to  the  Via 
Quirinale.  The  races  were  transferred  from  the  Corso 
to  this  street  at  the  Carnival  of  this  year.  There  are  here 
large  modern  hotels,  a  fine  new  theatre,  a  handsome 
American  Protestant  church  up,  ground  broken  for  an 
English  one,  and  grand  rows  of  palatial  "  flats."  Along 
with  all  this  development  there  is  the  usual  incident 
of  rising  prices  and  speculation.  Italian  speculation, 
however,  is  something  very  childlike  and  innocent  to 
American  experience. 

This  whole  quarter  is  a  result  of  New  Italy,  and  has 
sprung  into  life  entirely  since  Victor  Emmanuel  got  the 
reins  and  Cavour  effected  "  The  Union."  It  is  the  evi- 
dence that  Italy  has  awakened  at  last  to  the  modern 
life,  and  is  swinging  into  place  in  the  column  of  the 
nations.  While  we  may  regret  the  loss  of  the  pictur- 
esque and  the  absence  of  scenic  effect,  it  is  an  encourag- 
ing and  hopeful  sign,  welcome  to  all  who  do  not  believe 
in  the  saving  grace  of  squalor  and  wretchedness,  and  in 
the  godliness  of  dirt. 

There  are  many  influences  at  work  now  to  push  for- 
ward the  development  of  the  Roman  people.  In  many 
respects  the  people  strongly  resemble  us.  They  have 
intelligence,  versatility,  adaptability  to  circumstances, 
ready  tact,  and  a  very  practical  vein.  There  is  the 
same  bright  countenance,  the  same  activity  and  light- 
ness of  motion  seen  in  the  best  type  of  the  American. 
This  is  especially  the  case  with  the  North  Italians,  who 
will  be  the  brain  and  power  of  the  new  kingdom. 

The  union  of  Italy,  and  the  consequent  birth  of  a 
national  instinct,  has  given  a  powerful  impetus  to 
progress.  Along  with  political  freedom  has  come,  too, 
the  removal  of  the  frightful  mental  incubus  of  ecclesi- 
astical tyranny.  As  long  as  an  Inquisition  could  arrest 
men  in,  the  night-time  and  try  them  in  secret  for  their 


NEW  HOME.  387 

beliefs  and  opinions,  there  was  no  hope  for  either  moral, 
intellectual,  or  political  advancement.  The  only  relief 
lay  through  violence  and  bloodshed,  and  the  odds  were 
fearfully  against  the  suffering  victims.  Now  all  that  is 
changed,  and  the  movement  can  go  on,  healthily  and 
under  the  law. 

As  matters  now  stand,  and  as  they  must  stand  for 
some  time,  the  bayonet  is  the  saviour  of  Italy.  It  is  a 
sad  admission  to  make,  but  it  is  the  truth,  and  measures 
the  vast  difference  between  the  unhappy  condition  of 
this  people  and  the  fortunate  circumstances  of  ours. 
The  struggling  people  of  Italy  have  secured  their  rights 
from  the  ecclesiastical  aggression  of  ages  only  by  the 
bayonet,  and  they  hold  them  only  by  the  bayonet. 
Disband  the  armies  of  free  Italy,  and  the  Church  would 
reassume  temporal  power  and  rule  in  a  month.  The 
government  of  the  people,  for  the  people,  would  be  re- 
placed by  the  government  of  priests,  with  its  hideous 
and  appalling  record  of  the  last  one  thousand  years. 
Education  would  give  way  to  enforced  ignorance,  and 
civil  rights  be  lost  utterly  as  the  light  of  the  courts  of 
justice  went  out  in  the  hopeless  night  and  outer  dark- 
ness of  the  Inquisition.  Americans,  with  their  in- 
stinctive love  of  freedom,  often  resent  the  constant 
presence  of  the  soldiery  here,  who  throng  the  streets 
and  stand  on  guard  at  every  turn  ;  but  they  are  in  this 
case  a  necessary  evil.  It  is  unfortunate  to  have  to  rely 
on  military  power  even  for  a  sea-on,  but  it  would  he 
still  more  unfortunate  for  Italy  to  abandon  its  protection 
at  this  moment.  It  would  be  a  treason  to  humanity 
and  to  the  trust  of  government,  for  it  would  be  sur- 
rendering, without  a  struggle,  all  the  work  and  cost 
and  blood  of  the  last  thirtv  years. 

Again,  the  army  at  present,  in  addition  to  its  mili- 
tary uses,  serves  as  a  good  school  to  the  young  men  of 
new  Italy.  It  educates  them  to  the  conception  of 
nationality,  and  accustoms  them  to  the  use  of  civil 
force  against  ecclesiastical  usurpation.  Heretofore,  to 


388  MODERN  ITALY. 

disobey  a  priest,  who  was  in  reality  an  unscrupulous 
politician,  or  to  resist  a  corrupt  bishop,  has  been  looked 
on  as  a  sacrilege  and  resistance  to  heaven,  that  might 
be  followed  by  supernatural  punishment.  The  people 
were  in  the  unconscious  bondage  of  superstition,  which 
can  be  best  broken  up  by  the  constant  visible  presence 
of  the  power  of  the  civil  law. 

The  soldiers  of  Italy  are  a  fine-looking  body  of  men, 
intelligent,  cleanly,  of  resolute  bearing,  and  in  excellent 
condition  and  discipline.  They  are  so  far  beyond  their 
less  fortunate  brethren  who  are  not  in  the  ranks  that  I 
think  the  best  thing,  both  for  the  State  and  the  people, 
would  be  to  draft  the  whole  remaining  population,  and 
let  every  male  in  the  kingdom  have  the  benefit  of  a 
few  years'  service.  In  each  regiment  the  recruit  gets 
a  good  elementary  schooling  in  the  common  elements 
of  education ;  but  beyond  that  he  receives  a  moral 
training,  inducing  habits  of  self-reliance  and  self-respect, 
which  are  just  what  the  peasant  and  poor  artisan  need 
after  a  thousand  years  of  priest  rule.  The  army  is  the 
common  school  of  Italy,  and  it  is  the  best  she  can  have 
at  present. 

Again,  it  is  the  judicious  usage  of  the  war  minister 
to  shift  the  troops  about,  placing  the  northern  battal- 
ions on  duty  in  the  south,  the  southern  in  the  north, 
and  so  on,  the  very  thing  which  is  needed  to  break  up 
the  sectional  and  local  feeling  so  disastrously  strong  in 
Italy.  The  voung  soldier,  after  his  military  service  is 
over,  feels  that  he  is  not  any  more  a  Genoese,  a  Pisan, 
a  Neapolitan,  a  Roman,  or  a  Florentine,  but  something- 
better  and  greater, — an  Italian. 

One  of  the  most  conspicuous  features  of  new  Rome — 
the  Rome  that  is  open  and  free — is  the  new  American 
church  on  the  Via  Nazionale.  This  handsome  edifice, 
built  by  the  present  rector,  Rev.  Dr.  Robert  el.  Nevin, 
of  Pennsylvania,  has  been  put  up  only  since  the  open- 
ing of  Rome  by  Victor  Emmanuel.  It  is  of  large  size, 
even  for  this  city  of  basilicas,  and  is  constructed  in  the 


NEW  ROME. 

early  Gothic  of  Northern  Italy.  The  walls  are  of 
travertine,  the  stone  of  the  Colosseum^  and  St.  Peter's, 
and  it  is  floored  inside  with  Venetian  pavement, — a 
kind  of  rough  mosaic.  The  plan  of  the  building  is 
that  of  the  basilica,  with  apse,  nave,  and  side-aisles. 
The  tower  is  of  the  campanile  order,  with  ascending 
stories  of  airy  windows,  openings  which  let  out  the 
clear  sound  of  the  bells,  a  style  almost  unknown  in  our 
land,  but  which  harmonizes  admirably  with  the  skies 
and  landscape  of  Italy. 

This  beautiful  church,  with  its  twenty-three  bells 
ringing  every  Sunday  over  the  seven  hills,  is  a  perma- 
nent monument  to  the  free  right  of  all  men  to  worship 
God  according  to  their  own  faith.  It  stand-*  in  the 
very  camp  of  that  great  power  which  has  always 
denied  this  right,  and  we  can  justly  be  proud  that  it 
has  been  placed  there  by  American  liberality,  faith, 
and  courage.  Already  the  example  is  bearing  good 
fruit.  The  Church  of  England  is  laying  foundations 
for  a  church  on  the  Quattro  Fontaine,  and  some  six  or 
eight  congregations  of  various  Protestant  faiths  are 
organizing  and  building  over  a  city  where  for  long 
suffocating  centuries  their  worship  went  up  to  God 
only  from  the  torture-chambers  of  the  Inquisition  or 
the  sacrificial  piazzas  of  the  auto-da-fe. 

Another  feature  of  free  Italy  are. the  enfranchised 
bookstores.  In  the  old  times,  under  the  dead  hand 
of  the  Index  JExpurgatorius,  bookselling,  as  may  well 
be  imagined,  was  not  a  very  flourishing  -calling,  and 
the  shops  had  rather  a  meagre  supply  of  still  more 
meagre  matter.  To-day  an  hour  in  any  good  Roman 
bookstore  will  almost  startle  the  stranger.  The  litera- 
ture of  every  nation  greets  one  from  the  shelves  and 
tables, — German,  English,  American,  French,  Spanish, 
and  the  Italian  is  not  mainly  theological  or  religious, 
as  one  unconsciously  assumes,  but  largely  devoted  to 
the  physical  sciences  and  practical  treatises  on  mathe- 
matics and  engineering.  For  some  reason  politics  and 

33* 


390  MODERN  IT  ALL 

engineering  go  together  in  Italy,  as  they  Jo  also  in 
France,  and  this  sympathy  makes  engineering  a  popu- 
lar and  prominent  study.  The  average  Italian  candi- 
date for  political  office  is  not  a  lawyer,  as  with  us,  but 
an  engineer. 

Modern  Italian  literature,  however,  is  comparatively 
meagre  and  limited  in  its  range.  The  popular  want 
is,  therefore,  supplied  by  translating  copiously  from  the 
literature  of  other  nations,  and  it  is  surprising  to  see 
how  thoroughly  the  better  works  of  the  world  have 
been  appropriated.  All  the  standard  English  books 
and  much  of  the  current  publications  of  the  United 
States  and  England  are  reproduced  in  Italian.  This 
is  done  promptly,  and  as  that  Canada  thistle,  the  mid- 
dleman, has  not  yet  overrun  Italy,  books  can  be  bought 
there  comparatively  cheap.  They  are  much  cheaper 
than  with  us,  when  our  enormous  markets  are  taken 
into  account.  These  bookstores  of  which  I  am  speak- 
ing are  not  confined  to  the  new  quarter,  but  have  spread 
all  over  Home,  and  now  in  the  low  precincts  of  the 
Pantheon  or  even  under  the  spiked  guns  of  San  Angelo 
one  may  see  modern  scientific  tracts  exposed  for  sale 
among  little  tin  hearts  and  cheap  rosaries  and  the  votive 
offerings  of  all  kinds  so  well  known  and  so  flimsy,  rude, 
and  gaudy. 

There  is  another  movement  which  has  operated 
largely  to  the  modernization  of  Rome.  The  civil  gov- 
ernment in  succeeding  to  the  estate  of  the  ecclesiastical 
government  has  taken  many  of  the  old  conventual 
properties  for  public  use.  Thus,  all  the  departments 
of  State— the  War  Office,  the  Navy,  the  Post-Office, 
the  Foreign  Office — are  now  quartered  in  fine  large 
monasteries,  and  brisk-walking,  cleanly-clad  officials 
have  replaced  the  filthy-habited,  flea-haunted  monks 
who  made  the  city  picturesque  and  dirty  only  twenty- 
five  years  ago.  This  kind  of  appropriation  has  been 
on  a  very  large  scale,  and  quite  changes  the  face  of 
many  localities. 


NEH     ROME.  391 

Just  beyond  the  Ostian  gate  through  which  the  holy 
Apostle  St.  Paul  was  led  to  execution,  and  at  the  foot 
of  the  colossal  pyramidal  tomb  of  Caius  Cestus,  the 
only  surviving  monument  of  Rome  which  witnessed 
his  martyrdom,  nestles  "The  Protestant  graveyard/' 
also  a  field  of  the  Italy  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It 
is  "  outside  of  the  walls,"  but  a  century  or  so  ago  Rome 
was  not  cither  civilized  or  Christian  enough  for  even 
that. 

This  burial-ground  is  one  of  the  loveliest  places 
around  Rome,  and  is  full  of  tender  and  suggestive 
associations.  Jt  is  the  graveyard  of  those  who  die  here 
out  of  the  Roman  communion,  and  is  already,  perhaps, 
the  most  Catholic  spot  in  the  city.  Russians,  Danes, 
Germans,  French,  English,  Americans,  Italians,  and 
men  I  know  not  of  what  other  tongues,  lie  here  together 
awaiting  the  resurrection.  Under  its  dark  cypresses, 
and  among  its  clustering  roses,  are  some  twelve  hundred 
graves — a  silent  congregation  from  all  the  world.  The 
title  to  the  ground  is  vested  in  the  German  government, 
through  whose  courtesy  and  Christian  charity  and  na- 
tional courage  the  people  of  all  the  world  find  that 
consecrated  rest  which  is  denied  them  elsewhere  in  Rome 
by  act  of  its  Church. 

This  quiet  and  beautiful  spot,  covered  with  violets, 
swept  softly  by  fragrant  winds,  sleeping,  as  it  were, 
out  of  the  world,  is  so  restful  and  soothing  that  it  has 
a  singular  charm  for  all  who  see  it.  Shelly  sang  it  long 
ago— 

"Where,  like  an  infant's  smile,  over  the  dead 
A  light  of  laughing  flowers  along  the  grass  is  spread." 

His  heart  rests  in  it  to-day,  right  under  the  ruins  of 
an  ancient  loop-holed  tower  in  the  old  Aurelian  wall. 
Keats  is  there,  William  Howitt,  Gibson,  the  sculptor, 
and  long  lists  of  names  familiar  to  our  English  tongue. 
Most  of  the  graves  are  of  the  young — a  touching  me- 
mento of  blighted  promises  and  broken  hopes.  They 


392  MODERN  ITALY. 

are  those  who,  full  of  youth  and  hope,  were  cut  down 
on  their  travels — brides,  perhaps,  on  their  first  jour- 
ney, or  those  who  sought  life  in  foreign  lands  and 
found  death.  By  far  the  largest  proportion  of  names 
are  from  England.  The  English  do  not  have  that 
semi-morbid  desire  for  burial  in  their  own  land,  under 
any  circumstances,  which  presses  so  heavily  on  the 
American  and  Chinaman.  On  many  of  these  tombs 
are  read  the  names  of  noble  and  wealthy  families  of 
England  ;  but  although  England  is  so  near,  and  her 
family  burial -grounds  are  more  beautiful  and  impressive 
than  those  of  any  other  people,  when  an  Englishman 
dies  in  Rome,  no  matter  what  his  rank  or  position,  he 
generally  sleeps  there.  Here  they  are  in  force  among 
the  roses  and  lilies  and  oleanders  of  Italy,  lords  and 
ladies  and  children,  admirals  and  generals  with  their 
slumbering  effigies,  poets  and  artists  and  travellers,  at 
peace  forever.  Indeed,  so  peaceful  and  beautiful  is  this 
spot,  so  full  is  it  of  catholic  association,  so  emblematic 
is  it  of  the  fellowship  and  brotherhood  of  the  whole 
world,  as  it  shall  stand  on  the  resurrection  day,  when 
all  the  tribes  and  tongues  and  nations  of  the  earth  shall 
meet  together,  that  I  do  not  wonder  so  many  persons 
of  note  and  educated  tastes  have  accepted  it  as  their 
final  rest. 
HOME. 


UNITED   ITALY.  393 


CHAPTER  XLIII. 

UNITED    ITALY. 

ITALIAN  POLITICS — THE  GREAT  WORK  OF  THE  UNTON  OF 
ITALY — THE  CHURCH  IN  POLITICS — SETTLING  AN  ESTATE 
or  KINGDOMS — SECTIONALISM — NORTH  AND  SOUTH  ITALY — 
A  LOOK  INTO  THE  CHAMBER  OF  THE  CONGRESS  OF  THE  NEW 
KINGDOM  OF  ITALY— ENGLISH  FEATURES  OF  THE  HOUSE 
— MONTE  CITORIO — THE  MINISTRY — THE  FLOOR  OF  THE 
HOUSE. 

THE  union  of  Italy  is  the  keynote  of  modern  Italian 
politics  and  political  history,  and  it  has  been  a  grand 
achievement.  The  more  one  sees  under  the  surface, 
and  meets  the  leaders  of  the  several  interests  and  par- 
ties, the  more  he  is  impressed  with  the  consummate 
abilities  and  energy  of  the  men  who  achieved  it.  Our 
own  Union  in  1776-83  was  but  child's  play  compared 
with  the  work  in  Italy  of  the  past  twenty  years,  and 
our  pending  question  of  reconstruction  is  simple  aside 
of  the  problems  yet  to  be  solved  in  this  country  before 
it  becomes  one  nation,  thoroughly  united  in  heart  and 
head,  with  common  interests,  common  hopes,  and  a 
common  future. 

Let  me  for  a  moment  briefly  summarize  some  of  the 
grand  difficulties  which  have  stood  in  the  way.  They 
fairly  bristle  as  we  call  them  up,  starting  back  far 
through  the  centuries  and  enlisting  all  the  human  pas- 
sions. They  are  historic — of  blood,  of  climate,  of 
religion,  of  civic  pride,  of  finance,  of  ignorance,  of 
topography. 

And  first  of  blood.  The  Roman  race  is  at  its  best 
but  a  conglomerate  one,  but  Italy  is  not  even  purely 
Roman.  Naples  and  the  country  round  about  it  was 


394  MODERN  ITALY. 

settled  by  Greek  colonies,  and  the  people  to  this  day 
retain  the  peculiarities  and  show  the  traces  of  their 
Grecian  ancestry.  Sicily  has  even  a  marked  proportion 
of  Arab  blood.  Then,  again,  there  is  a  North  and  a 
South  Italy,  far  more  marked  in  their  diiferences  and 
histories  than  the  Northern  and  Southern  States  of  our 
country.  Their  differences  come  from  twenty  centuries. 
Their  special  characteristics  are  rooted  in  the  ages.  But 
the  dangers  of  sectionalism  here  are  not  limited  to  the 
clashing  interests  of  two  or  three  great  natural  sections. 

In  Italy  sectionalism  means  city  pride.  As  men- 
tioned in  a  previous  letter,  the  city  has  been  the  politi- 
cal unit  of  Italy  for  all  its  known  and  even  legendary 
history.  The  walled  city  held  no  communication  with 
it*s  neighbors,  save  those  of  war,  and  they  knew  each 
other  only  by  feuds  and  forays,  or  formal  treaties  with 
each  other  against  others.  Even  to-day  the  people  of 
one  Italian  town  talk  of  each  other  as  foreigners,  and 
speak  commonly  of  Genoese,  Milanese,  Neapolitans, 
Romans,  Florentines,  Pisans,  just  as  they  do  of  French, 
Germans,  English,  or  Americans.  It  is  in  their  blood 
and  will  not  go  out  inside  of  this  generation.  They 
have  to  be  educated,  not  from  the  conception  of  a  prov- 
ince or  a  state  up  to  the  idea  of  nationality,  but  from 
the  very  primitive  start  of  the  municipal  idea. 

Again,  there  are  the  geographical  troubles.  Large 
portions  of  the  new  nation,  such  as  Sardinia  and  Sicily, 
are  islands  "cut  off,"  of  course,  from  the  instantaneous 
communication  of  rail — the  new  artery  of  the  modern 
body  politic.  Even  the  mainland  is  not  compact,  but 
straggles  through  changing  climates,  inducing  different 
modes  of  living,  and  therefore  different  habits  and 
customs. 

There  is  a  North  and  a  South  Italy,  with  differences 
of  temperament  and  tastes  just  as  wide  and  deep-seated 
as  any  that  exist  between  our  Northern  and  Southern 
States.  There  is,  indeed,  a  rather  curious  parallel  be- 
tween our  two  nations  in  this,  North  Ttal}T  holding 


UNITED   ITALY.  395 

much  the  same  relation  to  South  Italy  as  do  our 
Northern  States  to  our  Southern  ones.  In  the  North- 
ern Kingdom  of  Italy  the  people  are  industrious,  active, 
and  comparatively  prosperous.  Their  children  go  to 
school.  They  themselves  fall  in  as  far  as  they  can 
with  the  thought  and  movement  of  the  age.  The  hold 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  loosens  first  in  the 
North.  Humbert,  the  Union  king,  comes  from  the 
Northern  house  of  Savoy. 

As  you  go  southward  these  characteristics  gradually 
weaken  and  disappear,  Industry  gives  way  to  idleness, 
activity  to  laziness,  school  training  to  ignorance,  religion 
survives  in  superstition,  and  the  dirty  mendicant  monk 
becomes  the  true  representative  man  of  the  country. 
The  statistics  of  Italian  illiteracy  run  exactly  as  do 
ours,  from  North  to  South.  From  the  latest  data  in 
the  Annuario  /SA///V/Vo,  it  appears  that  in  everv  thou- 
sand of  the  population  the  number  that  could  neither 
read  nor  write,  in  1871,  was,  in  Piedmont,  five  hundred; 
in  Lombardy,  five  hand  red  and  twenty-eight  ;  in  Tus- 
cany, seven  hundred  and  twenty-four;  in  the  Roman 
provinces,  seven  hundred  and  seventeen;  in  the  Neapol- 
itan district,  eight  hundred  and  fifty-six;  and  in  Sicily, 
eight  hundred  and  seventy-two.  It  is  the  same  de- 
scending scale  as  from  Maine  to  Mississippi. 

Worst  burden  of  all  for  Italy  is  this  appalling  igno- 
rance of  the  mass  of  the  people,  habituated  for  genera- 
tions to  a  galling  slavery  of  body  and  mind,  ruled  and 
owned  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave  by  priest  or  prince, 
and  unused  to  self-management,  self-providence,  or  self- 
control.  These  people,  when  brought  face  to  face  with 
the  question  of  self-government,  are  pitifully  ignorant. 
Ignorance  is  always  suspicious,  and  they  therefore  mis- 
trust experienced  lenders,  and  are  more  apt  to  be  con- 
trolled by  unscrupulous  cunning  than  intelligently  con- 
vinced by  argument.  By  a  law  of  nature  large  masses 
of  ignorance  always  gravitate  against  intelligence,  and 
the  party  that  raises  and  frees  this  people  must  expect 


396  MODERN  ITALY. 

to  have  them  turn  against  it.  At  this  moment  Gari- 
baldi, leading  the  radical  element,  and  the  Pope,  rep- 
resenting the  reactionary  forces  of  the  Vatican,  alike 
agree  in  advocating  universal  suffrage.  Garibaldi  asks 
it  as  a  logical  and  necessary  step  in  his  plan,  accepting 
the  immediate  risk  in  the  faith  of  the  good  that  is  to 
come.  The  Papal  power  is  willing  for  this  revolutionary 
step,  knowing  that  it  would  bring  to  the  polls  legions 
of  the  contadini,  the  ignorant  peasantry  of  the  villages, 
who  can  neither  read,  write,  nor  think,  and  who  are 
controlled  absolutely  by  their  priests.  At  present  suf- 
frage is  based  on  a  property  qualification,  and  is  con- 
fined to  a  comparatively  small  proportion  of,  the  popu- 
lation. The  qualified  voters  of  Italy  are,  by  last 
statistics,  just  2.26  to  every  one  hundred  of  population, 
and,  on  an  average,  only  sixty  per  cent,  of  the  vote  is 
ever  polled.  Were  the  doors  opened  to  manhood  suf- 
frage the  mass  of  the  Italian  vote  would  be  directed 
straight  from  the  Vatican,  and  cast  against  the  party 
of  union  and  freedom. 

The  great  disturbing  element,  however, — the  ugliest 
trouble  of  all, — is  the  political  claim  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church.  Its  relation  to  Italy  is  not  at  all  a 
religious  one,  as  in  our  country,  but  a  definitely  political 
one.  It  is  not  even  the  vexed  question  of  Church  and 
State — it  is  State  or  Church.  The  Roman  Catholic 
sovereignty  here  claims  the  temporal  dominion  of  the 
old  States  of  "the  Church  as  its  right,  and  is  fighting 
for  it  to-day  by  every  means  in  its  power.  It  excom- 
municated Victor  Emmanuel,  and  would  excommunicate 
King  Humbert  and  the  two  Chambers  of  Parliament, 
and  all  the  personnel  of  government  in  an  hour  if  it 
would  do  any  good.  It  is  a  political  imperium  in  im- 
perio,  and  a  power  of  such  strength  and  ramification 
that  it  cannot  be  struck  down  without  endangering  the 
very  structure  of  society.  At  this  very  day  the  king- 
dom of  Italy  is  paying  to  the  Pope,  an  active  worker 
for  its  overthrow,  an  annual  tribute  of  over  six  hundred 


UNITED  ITALY.  397 

thousand  dollars.  Imagine  some  vast,  restless  power 
in  our  land  which  controlled,  nominally,  at  least,  the 
religious  belief  of  the  entire  population ;  which  owned 
every  church-building  in  it,  with  one  or  two  exceptions, 
and  directed  all  the  worship  in  them  ;  which  had  a  vast 
machinery  of  paid,  organized  forces,  men  and  women, 
always  at  work,  and  which,  entering  into  every  family, 
nortli,  south,  east,  and  west,  and  influencing  all  their 
members  in  their  most  sacred  relations,  reaching  them 
in  the  cradle,  at  school,  on  the  marriage-day,  and  at  the 
hour  of  death,  was  restlessly  and  avowedly  plotting  for 
the  overthrow  of  the  government ;  demanding  it  as  a 
right,  and  adjuring  all  to  aid  in  it  as  a  religious  duty  ; 
imagine,  further,  that  our  people  were  so  superstitiously 
devoted  to  this  power  that  the  government  dare  not 
strike  at  it,  but  must  pay  it  a  large  pension — absolutely 
furnish  it  with  means  to  carry  on  its  claims — imagine 
all  this,  and  you  have  some  idea  of  the  civil  situation 
here,  and  begin  to  understand  the  appalling  odds  that 
confronted,  and  still  confront,  the  leaders  for  union. 
They  do  not  even  hold  their  own  camp. 

But  leaving  the  consideration  of  all  these  organic 
difficulties,  inherent  in  the  life  of  the  people,  when  the 
hour  of  success  at  last  came,  and  the  act  of  union  was 
consummated,  the  practical  adjustment  of  the  vested 
interests  which  were  to  be  merged  in  the  now  nation 
was  a  matter  of  infinite  tact,  patience,  and  cost  in  money. 
It  was,  in  fact,  the  settlement  of  an  estate  of  seven  king- 
doms. 

New  Italy  has  been  formed  out  of  seven  distiiK  i 
kingdoms  or  powers,  each  one  of  which  had  a  ruling 
family  whose  rights  and  interests  society,  the  social 
order  of  Europe,  recognized.  The  house  of  Savoy  got 
the  crown  of  Italy,  but  all  the  rest  had  to  be  pensioned 
or  provided  for  in  some  way. 

Each  of  these  kingdoms  had  its  court,  its  army,  its 
judiciary,  its  debt — all  the  machinery  and  burdens  of 
sovereignty.  The  adjustment  of  these  conflicting  and 

34 


398  MODERN  ITALY. 

unequal  interests  involved  endless  trouble  and  infinite 
concession  and  compromise.  The  debts  of  some  of  the 
little  countries  were  relatively  heavier  than  those  of 
others ;  had,  perhaps,  been  extravagantly  incurred,  or 
for  ends  distasteful  and  displeasing  to  some.  The  armies 
of  each  little  power,  too,  were  different.  Some  were  in 
good  order,  others  in  poor.  Some  were  relatively  larger 
than  others.  In  some  the  rank  of  the  officers  was  rel- 
atively higher  than  in  others,  in  some  the  pay,  in  some 
the  proportion  of  officers  to  men. 

The  same  difficulties  presented  themselves  in  the  civil 
list,  and  had  to  be  adjusted — many  of  them  by  money. 
Pensioning  was  the  easiest  way,  retiring  the  older  men 
to  make  way  for  the  younger,  or  the  inefficient  to  make 
room  for  better.  This,  although  expedient  and  neces- 
sary, was  expensive,  and  hence  Italy  enters  the  family 
of  nations  with  a  respectable  national  debt. 

Our  own  political  troubles  and  perplexities  look 
small  and  petty  when  compared  with  these — but  more, 
the  leaders  in  the  march  to  Italian  unity  have  had  to 
struggle  against  a  moral  opposition, — a  traditional  cur- 
rent of  thought, — a  stifling  mental  atmosphere,  of  which 
we  know  nothing.  I  heard  a  deputy  on  the  floor  of 
the  chamber  argue  against  the  further  extension  of  rail- 
ways in  the  kingdom,  because  the  facility  of  commu- 
nication afforded  the  common  people — the  "  working- 
men"  was  the  word  used — was  dangerous  to  the  good 
and  peace  of  the  country.  "It  produces,"  said  he, 
"  discontent,  socialism,  nihilism.  These  have  come  with 
the  railways  into  Europe.7' 

The  longer  and  the  deeper  one  studies  Italy  the 
greater  becomes  the  conception  of  the  union  of  Italy — 
the  grander  the  proportions  of  the  noble  monument 
which  Cavour  has  reared  to  bear  forever  his  name  into 
history. 

The  other  day,  through  the  kindness  of  a  senator, 
who  showed  me  over  the  parliament  building  and  in- 


UNITED   ITALY.  399 

troduced  me  into  the  chamber  of  the  representatives 
during  the  progress  of  an  important  debate,  I  had  an 
opportunity  of  seeing  the  "plant'7  of  the  government 
and  catching  a  glimpse  of  the  legislative  machinery  in 
motion.  The  hall  was  arranged  as  an  amphitheatre, 
the  members'  seats  rising  at  a  very  steep  ascent.  The 
speaker  and  clerks  sat  in  the  arena,  as  did  the  cabinet 
of  the  king,  who,  as  in  England,  have  the  privilege  of 
the  floor  to  defend  or  advocate  their  measures,  and  also 
that  the  representatives  of  the  people  may  interrogate 
them  at  any  time  as  to  their  conduct  of  affairs.  They 
do  not  vote.  The  ministry  si i ids  also  with  the  par- 
liamentary majority,  as  is  the  English  usage.  In  this, 
in  the  presence  of  the  ministers  on  the  Hoor,  and  in 
paying  them  salaries  and  noi  paying  the  members, 
Italy  has  patterned  closely  after  England,  refusing  our 
younger  precedent. 

The  assembly  seemed  to  be  composed  of  men  very 
muc*h  of  the  age  and  same  relative  station  of  life  as 
the  membership  of  our  lower  house  at  Washington. 
The  liou.se  was  <{iiieter  and  more  decorous  than  ours 
in  the  ordinary  flow  of  business,  but  at  one  moment, 
when  a  little  excitement  did  occur,  it  fluttered  and 
quivered  like  a  living  thing  in  a  way  entirely  impos- 
sible, perhaps,  to  a  deliberative  body  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  rare.  The  little  trouble  flamed  up  instanta- 
neously all  around  the  circled  walls  of  the  chamber  like 
powder  in  a  pan,  and  while  the  feeling  was  intense  and 
the  whole  floor — speaking  ar  once — seemed  to  throb 
and  pulse  with  excitement,  you  felt  convinced  all  the 
time  that  it  was  not  deep  or  dangerous,  and  would  die 
out  safely,  as  it  did  in  a  minute  or  two,  without  leaving 
a  trace. 

In  this  assembly  the  speaker  calls  the  house  to  ordei 
by  the  ringing  of  a  bell.  It  very  effectually  silences 
interruption  and  the  discordant  voices,  but  had  to  me 
something  of  a  railway-depot  effect,  that  being  the  sig- 
nal here  for  the  trains  to  draw  out.  As  in  the  churches, 


400  MODERN  ITALY. 

however,  they  announce  the  presence  of  the  Host  by  the 
ringing  of  a  bell,  it  may  have  more  dignified  associations 
for  Italian  ears. 

The  senate  is  appointed  by  the  king,  the  lower  house 
chosen  by  the  people,  the  electors,  however,  being  but 
a  limited  portion  of  the  population,  suffrage  resting  on 
a  property  qualification.  Congressmen — deputies  they 
call  them — receive  no  pay,  but  have  high  social  and 
political  rank  by  virtue  of  their  office,  a  deputy  taking 
precedence  of  a  prince.  This  is  a  wise  provision  in  a 
country  where  social  rank  is  so  great  a  force. 

The  congress  of  the  new  kingdom  of  United  Italy 
does  not  sit  in  the  old  Capitol  of  historic  tradition  and 
legend,  nor  even  on  its  site.  That  spot,  so  rich  in  asso- 
ciation and  suggestion,  belongs  to  the  city  of  Rome, 
and  civic  pride  will  not  surrender  it  for  the  uses  of  the 
nation.  It  is  a  municipal  treasure,  and  will  not  be 
given  up.  The  chambers,  therefore,  sit  in  a  massive 
old  palace,  which  has  been  remodelled  for  their  use.  The 
palazzo  Monte  Citorio  is  plain,  but  very  substantial, 
and  seats  commodiously  the  five  hundred  members.  It 
contains  library,  reading-room,  committee-rooms,  and 
all  the  usual  incidental  accommodations.  As  the  new 
kingdom  is  poor,  all  the  fitting  up  has  been  done  econ- 
omically, and  with  a  very  praiseworthy  avoidance  of 
extravagance,  or  anything  which  could  bear  that  in- 
terpretation. Economy,  indeed,  is  the  rule  of  the  new 
kingdom,  and  is  seen  in  everything  that  starts  with  the 
Union.  The  new  cabinet  ministers,  for  instance,  receive 
salaries  of  but  $4000.  There  are  many  expensive 
legacies  of  the  past,  however.  This  parliament-house 
is  the  only  public  building,  civil  or  religious,  I  have 
seen  in  Rome  which  is  not  weighed  down  with  statuary. 
There  is  not  a  single  piece  in  it,  nor  did  I  see  any  paint- 
ings save  one — a  full-length  portrait  of  Victor  Em- 
manuel. All  the  embellishments  of  the  halls,  library, 
and  reading-rooms' were  very  modest  engravings.  Our 
country  was  recognized  by  an  old  but  g^od  likeness  of 


UNITED  ITALY.  401 

Washington,  frame  and  all  about  one  and  a  half  by  two 
feet  in  size.  It  would  be  a  graceful  act,  and  do  good, 
if  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  would  send  its  card 
to  young  Italy  in  the  shape  of  a  large  and  full-size 
painting  of  the  Father  of  that  country  whose  Union  has 
been  the  chart  and  sampler  for  the  statesmen  who  con- 
ceived and  are  achieving  the  freedom  of  the  .Roman 
people. 

The  library  is  small,  but  started  on  a  judicious  plan, 
and  will  grow  into  a  valuable  collection.  The  leading 
pajvrs  of  each  country  in  the  world,  received  daily  and 
preserved  bound,  is  one  of  its  features.  In  the  reading- 
room  you  sit  and  read  the  powerful  journal  of  each 
nation.  Everything  here,  as  in  the  building  at  large, 
was  severely  plain  and  sensible,  the  best  iiutfcrifl  of  all 
kinds,  but  no  show.  The  eommittee-rooms  were  en- 
tirely devoid  of  ornament,  frescos,  or  sumptuous  fur- 
niture, in  sharp  contrast  with  our  gorgeous  civic  salons 
for  this  kind  of  use. 

In  the  general  service  of  the  building  there  was 
something  more  of  form  than  with  us,  but  not  as  much 
as  is  common  in  a  private  palace  here.  When  one  of 
the  speakers  arose  during  my  visit  to  make  his  argu- 
ment, a  servant  in  full  livery  bore  to  him  some  wine 
on  a  silver  salver.  All  the  employes  of  the  house, 
— doorkeepers,  pages,  mo-enters — we.re  liveried,  and 
in  addition  wore  a  band  or  narrow  sash  of  the  national 
tricolor  bound  around  the  left  arm,  its  breadth  and 
varying  decree  of  amplencss  denoting  their  relative 
rank.  Further,  these  servants  of  the  legislative 
chambers  differ  very  greatly  from  those  at  the  Capitol 
in  Washington,  in  not  being  under  the  impression  that 
they  are  the  most  influential  personages  in  the  building. 

ROME. 


84* 


402  MODERN  ITALY. 


CHAPTER  XLIV. 

GARIBALDI. 

THE  RED-SHIRTED  LEADER  AT  WORK  ON  A  SICK-BED — PIC- 
TURE OP  A  Mii^LE-rv-fAss  ITALIAN  HOME — A  MILITARY 
HEADQUARTERS  wii..,,  NO  RED  TAPE — A  REVOLUTIONARY 
COURT — CRYING  THE 'DAILY  PAPERS  IN  THE  COLOSSEUM — 
THE  GARIBALDIAN  CREED — EUROPEAN  REPUBLICANISM—- 
THE EMERGENCE  OF  THE  COMMON  PEOPLE. 

ITALY — Garibaldi.  The  two  names  reflect  and 
suggest  each  other  to  the  American  mind  whenever  it 
thinks  of  the  Roman  people,  or  of  Italian  nationality. 
And  it  is  almost  the  same  here.  There  are  three  pic 
tures  one  meets  everywhere  in  Italy, — in  the  streets 
and  shops,  side  by  side,  equal  in  the  honor  and  affec 
tion  of  the  people, — King  Humbert,  Queen  Marguerite, 
and  Garibaldi.  The  soldier-king  and  the  beautiful 
young  queen  are  the  fortunate  man  and  woman  who 
happen  to  represent  in  their  persons  at  this  hour  the 
power  of  all  the  organized  forces  of  society,  govern- 
ment, learning,  culture,  aristocracy,  property,  for  two 
thousand  years.  Twenty  centuries  are  behind  them, 
and  combine  to  make  them.  Garibaldi  is  the  orator 
of  the  common  people.  A  man  of  themselves, — poor, 
simple  in  manner  and  speech, — they  have  raised  him 
by  acclamation  to  a  seat  beside  princes  in  a  land  which, 
from  time  immemorial,  has  been  the  heritage  of  princes. 
His  strength,  too,  represents  a  permanent  force,  and 
not  an  emotion  or  transitory  excitement,  for  his  power 
with  the  people  is  a  sustained  one,  and  has  endured 
through  an  eventful  life,  checkered  by  poverty,  mis- 
fortune, and  defeat. 

Certainly,  there  is  no  man  of  Europe  more  worthy 
of  study  than  this  one,  who  represents  the  people  in  an 


GARIBALDI.  40$ 

age  when  their  advent  to  political  power  threatens  the 
whole  structure  of  society  as  it  has  traditionally  existed. 

I  had  the  good  fortune  of  visiting  Garibaldi  the 
other  day,  in  company  with  the  proprietor  of  one  of 
the  leading  New  York  dailies,  and  my  brother,  Rev. 
Dr.  Nevin,  of  Rome,  whose  influence  with  a  distin- 
guished officer  here,  the  chief  of  staff  of  the  Italian 
army,  had  procured  us  a  responsible  introduction  and 
an  audience* — the  old  revolutions*"  "-PI  ^-al  being  on  a 
sick-bed,  and  too  ill  to  see  visiu  .s  except  for  good 
cause. 

The  surroundings  of  the  old  hero,  although  severely 
simple,  were  rather  dramatic,  and  thoroughly  in  accord 
with  the  popular  conception  of  his  person  and  habits. 
We  found  him  in  an  obscure  street,  at  the  house  of  his 
son, — the  house  a  very  plain  one, — and,  for  this  town, 
small.  The  family  occupied  the  second  floor,  what  in 
the  United  States  would  be  known  as  the  third  story. 
The  narrow  hall  and  steps  all  the  way  up  were  stone, 
hard  and  cold,  and  the  hall-windows  looking  into  the 
street  had  no  glass  in  them,  were  simply  apertures 
in  a  thick  stone  wall;  save  in  the  sick  man's  bedroom, 
there  were  no  carpets  on  any  of  the  floors,  but  there 
were  some  brilliant  and  quite  good  frescos  on  the  high 
ceilings.  The  first  room  along  which  we  passed,  and 
which  was  necessarily  in  full  view  of  every  visitor,  was 
the  kitchen,  odorous  and  picturesquely  dirty,  as  is  the 
custom  of  the  country.  A  young  woman  was  at  her 
work  in  it,  careless  of  the  fact  that  a  historic,  character 
would  eat  of  her  food,  and  that  a  revolution  might  be 
brewing  iu  the  next  room.  The  setting  of  the  picture 
was,  in  fact,  quite  revolutionary.  Two  doors  off,  in 
the  solid  brick  gateway  of  a  large,  cold  building,  stood, 
or  rather  lounged,  three  rough  men,  with  the  air  of 
irregulars, — the  very  picture  of  a  vigilance  committee, 
— who  eyed  us  closely  and  curiously  as  we  entered  the 
door.  At  the  entrance  of  the  Garibaldi  apartments 
we  were  received  by  an  old  soldier,  wounded,  clad  in 


404  MODERN  ITALY. 

coarse,  civilian  clothes,  but  wearing  the  red  shirt,  He 
viewed  us  rather  suspiciously,  as  had  several  Garibaldi- 
ans  whom  we  passed,  half-posted,  half-lounging,  in  the 
porter's  gate  and  entry,  evidently  looking  on  my 
brother's  ecclesiastical  dress  with  no  friendly  eyes,  and 
as  entirely  out  of  place  in  that  locality.  The  name  of 
the  Italian  general,  however,  acted  as  a  talisman.  Dis- 
trust gave  way  to  respect,  and  when  we  informed  the 
old  veteran  that  we  were  soldiers  and  Americans,  come 
to  see  his  chief,  we  had  at  once  a  warm  friend  at  court. 
He  had  fought  in  America  for  freedom,  he  proudly 
told  us,  and  welcomed  his  co-patriots  with  enthusiasm. 

Here  I  should  say,  that  in  order  to  secure  a  more 
satisfactory  and  uninterrupted  interview,  we  had  left 
our  letter  of  introduction  and  cards  the  day  before 
with  a  secretary,  and  arranged  with  him  for  a  fixed 
hour  to  call.  In  true  Italian  fashion,  this  had  been 
the  end  of  that  forethought.  Garibaldi  had  never 
seen  the  letter,  or  heard  of  it,  and  we  had  to  introduce 
ourselves  with  no  word  of  announcement  save,  I  sup- 
pose, the  kindly  commendation  of  our  red-shirted 
.comrade. 

Garibaldi  lay  on  a  narrow,  iron-frame  bed,  of  what 
we  would  call  a  hospital  pattern,  but  which  is  of  ordi- 
nary use  here,  his  frame  wasted,  his  face  thin  and  worn, 
but  his  eye  bright  and  sparkling,  firing  with  enthusi- 
asm, or  softening  into  warm  and  genial  sympathy  as  he 
spoke.  He  called  in  quick  and  nervous  tones  for  the 
letter  when  he  found  it  had  not  been  delivered.  A  little 
granddaughter  scudded  around  the  bedroom,  hunting 
on  tables  and  chairs  for  the  paper.  The  old  soldier 
ran  to  a  large  heap  of  letters  and  documents  piled  on  a 
side- table,  without  order  or  arrangement,  and  tumbled 
them  over  and  over,  but  without  effect.  Some  of  them 
bore  the  official  envelope  of  the  Quirinal.  Some  women 
from  an  adjoining  bedroom  took  part  in  the  hunt,  but 
without  results,  and  at  last,  as  the  sound  of  many  voices 
all  talking  at  once  cleared,  and  the  clatter  of  hands  and 


GARIBALDI.  405 

feet  stopped,  the  cry  went  up,  "  Menotti  has  it!" 
Menotti  was  the  son,  and  out  of  the  house. 

The  old  general  spoke  with  some  little  effort,  but  to 
the  last  with  enthusiasm.  He  remembered  America 
with  friendly  kindness,  and  seemed  unaffectedly  pleased 
when  I  told  him  that  hi.s  name  was  a  household  word 
with  our  people.  His  eye  kindled  as  he  spoke  of  the 
united  Italy,  and  seemed  to  thank  the  stranger  that 
took  the  friendly  interest  to  a^k  about  it  and  express 
sympathy  with  it.  In  fact,  the  raison  d'etre  of  Gari- 
baldi is  the  union  of  Italy.  It  is  his  instinctive  sym- 
pathies with  every  impulse  in  this  direction  which  give 
him  such  a  hold  on  the  hearts,  and  make  him  the  ex- 
ponent of  the  will  and  aspirations,  of  the  Italian  people. 
Union  means  the  ultimate  coming  forward  of  the 
masses.  Coming  out  of  the  bedroom  of  the  prostrate 
soldier,  I  was  curious  to  observe  the  manner  of  life  of 
the  man  and  his  following.  It  was  intensely  democratic. 

In  an  ante-room  there  waited  twenty-six  people,  six 
of  whom  were  women.  Some  of  the  waiting  crowd 
were  foreigners,  but  the  great  bulk  were  Italians,  and 
apparently  quite  poor.  Of  all  the  native  attendance 
there  was  but  one  man  whom  we  would  call  in  our 
country  well  dressed.  There  was  a  committee  of  seven 
young  men  with  an  address, — a  delegation  from  some 
Italia  irridenta  club, — a  rather  combustible-looking 
body.  There  was  a  poor  woman,  evidently  come  for 
help;  the  correspondent  of  the  London  Times;  a 
bright,  half-faded,  dark-eyed  woman  of  the  adventuress 
type;  some  more  veterans,  come  likely  to  snuff  up  the 
prospects  for  future  work.  It  was  emphatically  a  court 
of  the  people,  and  in  it  you  seemed  to  breathe  the  air 
of  uprisings  and  revolution.  There  was  no  formality 
of  any  kind,  but  work  wont  on  of  itself — with  earnest- 
ness if  not  with  regulation.  A  secretary  was  writing 
busily  at  a  small  table  in  the  centre  of  the  room,  all  his 
papers  and  work  exposed  to  the  crowd.  No  "cards  were 
sent  in,  but  the  red-shir  ted  soldier  acjtc'd  as  master  of 


406  MODERN  ITALY. 

ceremonies,  communicating  with  Garibaldi  from  time 
to  time,  and  announcing  results  effectively  by  opening 
the  door  and  letting  in  such  as  were  called  for.  There 
was  little  furniture,  and  most  of  the  visitors  stood  up 
while  awaiting  their  audience.  On  a  wardrobe-top, 
used  for  table  purposes,  lay  some  stray  letters,  news- 
papers, and  a  volume  in  the  French  language.  I 
picked  it  up.  Its  title  was  La  Papessa  Jeanne. 

Garibaldi  suffers  great  personal  disadvantage  in  the 
likeness  of  him  which  has  gone  over  all  lands,  and 
which  is,  perhaps,  all  that  the  photograph  can  do.  He 
needs  a  painter  to  give  him  to  the  world,  and  a  painter 
as  great  as  himself.  The  accepted  picture,  which  is 
known  the  world  over,  may  be  a  correct  map  of  the 
lines  of  his  physical  features,  but  it  misses  entirely  the 
real  man.  It  is  heavy  and  rather  stolid.  He  is  bright, 
of  fine  intellectual  cast,  and  with  an  exceptionally  sym- 
pathetic smile  that  wins  all  hearts.  It  is  this  real, 
earnest,  world-wide  sympathy  which  has  made  him  the 
leader  of  the  common  people  of  Europe.  He  is  neither 
a  soldier  nor  a  statesman,  he  is  an  impulse  and  an 
enthusiasm.  He  has  made  military  mistakes,  and  his 
political  moves  are  often  erratic  to  a  degree.  They  are, 
in  fact,  not  politic  movements  at  all — simply  straight- 
forward demonstrations,  in  season  and  out,  for  the  end. 
His  is  the  heart,  not  the  head,  power,  and  as  the  masses 
of  his  forces  have,  at  present,  no  higher  sense  of  action 
than  the  blind,  personal  following  of  some  leadership, 
his  is  the  force  that  is  needed.  Being  without  govern- 
mental power,  he  has  no  responsibilities,  and  so  far 
does  not  need  the  strength  of  judgment  and  careful 
policy.  He  represents  the  aspirations  of  a  people  that 
long  for  the  morning  after  the  dreary  night  of  the 
Dark  Ages. 

And  nothing  but  loving  sympathy  can  do  the  work 
for  them.  Nothing  but  that  could  sustain  the  leader 
or  hold  the  trust  of  this  people,  steeped  in  the  dense 
ignorance  of  centuries  of  slavery  of  mind  and  soul. 


GARIBALDI.  4Q7 

Ignorance  is  always  its  own  hopeless  foe  by  an  inex- 
orable law.  The  ignorant  man  is  suspicious  by  reason 
of  his  ignorance.  The  suspicious  man  is  a  ready  dupe 
to  cunning  and  low  suggestion  by  reason  of  his  sus- 
picions. When  the  battle  of  universal  suffrage  is  fought 
by  Garibaldi  for  the  Roman  people  and  won  for  them, 
they  will  turn  against  him  and  vote  for  the  reactionary 
party,  just  as  surely  as  did  the  negroes  of  the  South 
with  us.  He  has  faith,  however,  and  is  willing  to 
make  the  sacrifice,  trusting  in  God  for  the  ultimate 
result. 

The  struggle  for  the  social  advancement  of  the  com- 
mon people  on  this  spot  is  a  very  discouraging  one. 
Even  the  centuries  work'  against  it.  The  other  day,  in 
the  shadows  of  the  Colosseum,  I  heard  a  faint,  thin 
cry.  A  newsboy,  a  youth  of  some  nineteen  years,  had 
come  in  with  half  a  do/en  papers  on  his  arm,  which  is 
a  fair  load  here.  He  looked  around,  advanced  reflect- 
ively, called  out  two  or  three  times:  "  11  Popolo  Ro- 
mano" on  a  decrescendo  scale,  and  then  he  too  subsided 
into  rest  and  meditation.  The  presence  of  the  crowd- 
ing years  was  too  much,  and  this  is  largely  the  history 
of  all  action  here.  The  great  national  force  is  inertia. 

Garibaldi  throws  his  great  political  influence  with 
the  king,  who  in  this  staiie  of  affairs  represents  United 
Italy.  When  he  came  to  Rome,  some  ten  days  since, 
weak  and  sick,  carried  almost  like  a  dead  man  from 
the  depot  to  his  son's  house,  amid  the  cheers  and  wail- 
ing of  the  populace,  the  king  paid  him  the  first  visit. 
Some  days  later  Garibaldi  repaid  it,  going  in  a  carriage, 
which  he  was  not  able  to  leave.  He  was  driven  into 
the  lovely  gardens  of  the  Quirinal,  when  the  king  came 
down,  and,  entering, the  carriage,  sat  with  him  during 
the  interview.  His  relations  with  the  established  gov- 
ernment are  cordial  and  complete ;  in  fact,  he  is  drawing 
a  large  pension  from  the  State. 

While  accepting  the  crown  as  the  representative  to- 
day of  established  government  and  Italian  union,  and 


408  MODERN   ITALY. 

throwing  his  iniiuence  with  it  in  the  interest  of  order, 
Garibaldi  is  in  no  way  satisfied  with  the  administration, 
and  his  political  position  is  on  the  extreme  left  of  the 
Lefts.  It  is  doubtful,  however,  if  he  would  be  satis- 
fied with  any  government.  He  is  a  poet,  although  a 
writer  of  bad  verses,  and  lacks  the  practical  grasp  of 
statesmanship.  It  is  his  mission  to  arouse  and  destroy, 
not  to  protect  and  administer. 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  think  of  Garibaldi  as  an 
American  Republican.  He  is  a  born  revolutionist,  with 
all  those  dangerous  beliefs  which  European  conservatism 
have  made  the  creed  of  European  Republicanism.  So- 
cialism, communism,  nihilism,  have  his  undoubted 
sympathies,  and  I  think  he  would  gladly  break  up  the 
present  order  of  society  at  any  immediate  cost.  With 
the  assassination  of  kings  he  has  expressed  more  than 
sympathy.  His  deliberately  written  words  are  those 
of  encouragement.  It  sharply  defines  the  contrast 
between  European  and  American  Republicanism,  be- 
tween the  fortunate  condition  of  the  people  of  America 
and  the  desperate  state  of  the  masses  of  Europe,  to 
remember  that  assassination,  which  with  us  is  never 
regarded  save  as  an  unmixed  crime  and  a  cowardly  one, 
is,  in  Europe,  dispassionately,  and  often  intelligently 
considered  as  a  political  weapon,  and  that  not  as  a 
remedy  for  evil,  but  merely  to  call  attention  to  it.  It 
is  in  many  cases  a  deliberate  act  of  self-immolation. 
Garibaldi  has  all  his  life  been  heading  forlorn  hopes 
against  the  entrenchments  of  privilege  and  vested 
power,  and  his  feelings  very  naturally  are  very  differ- 
ent from  those  of  men  who  have  never  had  to  fight 
this  battle. 

For  a  whole  lifetime  Garibaldi  has  been  the  mover 
of  the  oppressed  peoples  of  Europe,  leading  them  in 
one  desperate  effort  after  another  that  has  always  ended 
in  his  defeat  and  disaster.  To-day,  as  he  nears  death, 
his  body  worn  away  by  the  force  of  the  still  living  and 
powerful  soul  within  it,  it  is  dramatic  to  think  that  he 


GARIBALDI.  4Q9 

stands,  like  the  leader  of  old  on  Pisgah's  top,  almost 
in  reach  of  the  promised  land  of  his  hopes  and  proph- 
ecies. In  Germany  an  appalling  military  despotism, 
like  a  blind  fate,  is  forcing  the  question  of  human  rights 
to  a  violent  issue  on  a  grand  scale.  In  England,  to-day, 
the  social  and  political  power  of  the  common  people  is 
steadily  growing  healthily  and  peacefully.  In  France 
they  stand  a  guard  in  possession  of  the  government. 
In  Italy  they  wait  in  hope,  under,  perhaps,  the  freest 
constitutional  government  of  the  continent.  In  Russia 
they  are  blindly  rising  in  crime  and  blood — illogically, 
illegally,  but  in  a  way  that  is  striking  terror  into  organ- 
ized society  all  over  Europe,  and  forcing  the  consider- 
ation of  the  situation  on  the  fears  and  conscience  of 
those  now  fortunate  classes  who,  for  a  thousand  years, 
have  enjoyed  the  trust  of  government  without  ever 
being  called  on  for  an  account  of  their  stewardship,  or, 
perhaps,  ever  thinking  much  of  their  responsibility. 
ROME. 


CHAPTER  XLV. 

MODERN   ITALY. 

KEEPING  THE  NATIONAL  HOLIDAY  OF  THE  UNION — THE  PEOPLE 
OF  NEW  ITALY — TKANSITION  CONTRASTS — THE  AMERICAN 
AND  ITALIAN  PHYSIQUE — TIIK  II KIRS  OF  IMPERIAL  ROME — 
COMMON  LIFE  IN  ITALY — MODERN  ITALY — PUBLIC  BUILD- 
INGS— THE  ROMAN  SUNDAY — THE  NEWSPAPERS, 

TO-DAY,  being  the  first  Sunday  in  June,  is  the 
national  holiday, — the  Fourth  of  July  of  New  Italy, 
— and  it  has  been  kept  with  a  good  d<-al  of  enthu- 
siasm ;  the  more  so,  perhaps,  as  it  falls  this  year  on 
Whit-Sunday,  and  both  parties,  the  u  blacks'7  (papal) 
and  the  "  whites"  (national),  can  join  in  gentle  vivas 
and  wearing  flowers. 

s  35 


410  MODERN   ITALY. 

The  streets  were  crowded  all  day  long  with  well- 
dressed  and  intelligent-looking  people.  It  has  seemed 
to  me  that  the  throngs  on  the  streets  and  piazzas  were 
of  a  better  class  of  persons — more  prosperous,  and 
brighter  looking  in  face  and  manner — than  those  who 
turn  out  on  the  Church  fete  days.  They  are  the  people 
of  New  Italy.  Among  them  were  groups  of  peasants, 
rnsn  and  women, — the  men  in  their  sheepskin  clothing, 
and  the  women  with  their  red  shawls,  outside  corsets, 
and  Ionic  head-dress,  giving  local  color  to  the  scene,  and 
relieving  the  otherwise  dead  level  of  the  respectability 
of  the  multitude,  which  looked  much  like  an  American 
crowd. 

The  main  feature  of  the  day  was  a  review  of  the 
troops  and  their  parade  before  the  king  and  the  queen 
and  their  court.  Some  five  thousand  infantry  were  in 
line.  The  soldiery  were  in  very  good  condition  for 
field  service,  but  they  had  not  that  finish  of  drill  and 
accui'acy  of  movement  which  our  army  had  attained 
generally  before  its  disbandment  in  1865.  Wherever 
I  have  seen  the  Italian  troops  this  creditable  feature 
comes  out.  They  seem  to  be  drilled  and  handled  with 
constant  reference  to  eifective  field  use,  and  compara- 
tively little  attention  paid  to  the  parade  side  of  the 
training.  They  always  march  with  a  long,  swinging 
quickstep,  and  have  achieved  a  wonderful  celerity  of 
movement. 

After  the  review,  the  troops  were  formed  in  double 
lines,  faced  inward,  along  the  broad  and  handsome  Via 
Nazionale,  leading  to  the  Quirinal,  and  through  these 
lines  rode  the  queen  in  an  open  landau,  with  ladies  and 
officers  of  state.  Following  her,  about  five  minutes 
later,  the  king  rode  down  the  lines  on  horseback,  ac- 
companied by  Prince  Amadeo  of  Spain,  a  large  and 
brilliant  staff,  and  his  body-guard,  which  is  not  a  show 
troop  of  costumed  dragoons,  but  an  effective  body  of 
cavalry.  1  had  the  opportunity  some  weeks  ago  of 
inspecting  this  troop  at  their  barracks,  and  was  sur- 


MODERN  ITALY. 

prised  to  find  how  thoroughly  they  were  equipped  for 
field  service,  and  how  thoroughly  the  officers  accepted 
this  as  their  work,  never  for  a  moment  seeming  to  think 
of  themselves  as  being  set  apart  for  mere  escort  or 
ornamental  duty. 

As  tne  queen  passed  down  the  street  there  was  a 
graciously  hearty  acclamation  from  the  dense  crowds 
which  surged  on  both  sides  against  the  living  walls  of 
soldiery, — and  it  was  repeated  when  the  king  appeared. 
The  demonstration,  however,  while  real  and  kindly, 
was  not  as  vigorous  as  is  our  American  fashion.  I  have 
seen  a  governor  received  in  Philadelphia  with  far  louder 
cheers  and  much  more  violent  enthusiasm.  The  vivas 
and  hand-clapping  rather  reminded  me  of  the  fashion- 
able repressed  and  kid-glove  encoring  of  our  Academy 
of  Music.  Perhaps  this  may  be  explained  by  saying 
that  the  lower  classes  of  the  Italians  have  as  gentle 
manners  as  the  higher  classes  of  Americans.  1  noticed 
this  particularly  in  the  behavior  of  the  troops  towards 
the  people.  They  held  their  lines  always  intact  and 
kept  the  street  clear,  but  without  a  rough  word  or 
action, — officers  and  men  had  the  manners  and  demeanor 
of  gentlemen  in  a  ball-room  throughout  all  the  move- 
ments. 

The  display  of  bunting  was  very  moderate,  and  not 
at  all  equal  to  the  ordinary  American  demonstration 
on  the  Fourth  of  July.  The  flags  were  few  and  small 
compared  with  our  show  on  such  an  occasion.  Indeed, 
the  very  largest  in  size  was  an  American  one,  which 
floated  from  the  campanile  of  the  American  Church,  and 
directly  under  which  the  royal  party  passed. 

In  the  evening  there  was  an  illumination  of  the  city 
in  honor  of  the  event.  Roman  fireworks  are  noted  the 
world  over  for  their  excellence  and  cheapness,  and  the 
display  was  creditably  brilliant.  The  old  Castle  San 
Angelo,  the  centre  of  the  illumination,  stood  out 
grandly,  like  a  fortress  of  fire,  and,  as  the  successive 
explosions  of  the  fireworks  boomed  through  the  city, 


412  MODERN  ITALY. 

one  could  almost  imagine  that  some  of  the  old  warrior 
popes  were  at  their  work  again.  The  Vatican  was  dark 
and  silent.  The  national  fete  of  to-day  is  a  State  anni- 
versary, held  in  honor  of  the  adoption  of  the  modern 
constitution.  As  the  pope  is  virtually  a  dethroned  ruler 
here,  and  still  keeps  up  his  claims  to  the  temporal  sover- 
eignty of  his  old  kingdom,  he  would  hardly  be  expected 
to  join  in  the  celebration  of  the  adoption  of  the  liberal 
constitution  under  which  King  Humbert  administers 
the  government. 

The  transition  from  the  absolute  autocracy  of  the 
Papal  government  to  the  very  limited  monarchy  of  the 
United  Kingdom  has  not  been  a  quiet  or  easy  one,  and 
the  ecclesiastical  and  civil  parties  stand  widely  apart. 
Under  the  old  regime*  the  Church  had  gotten  to  be  the 
main  land-owner  of  the  country.  Two-fifths  of  all  the 
real  estate  was  said  to  be  in  its  possession.  The  new 
government  found  it  necessary  to  confiscate  a  large  por- 
tion of  this  and  return  it  to  healthy  uses.  Laws  were 
passed  appropriating  large  properties  for  the  immediate 
use  of  the  government,  and  providing  for  the  gradual 
extinction  of  the  monastic  establishments,  which  had 
grown  plethoric  with  estate  and  meagre  in  membership. 
To-day  nearly  all  the  great  department  buildings  are 
confiscated  convents,  and  many  others  have  been  sold 
or  rented  for  private  purposes.  These  buildings  often 
still  retain  their  old  legends  and  titles,  and  the  effect  is 
singularly  confusing,  and  at  times  odd. 

Over  a  restaurant,  for  instance,  on  this  street  you  see 
ave  gratia  plena.  The  headquarters  of  the  police  de- 
partment, which,  however,  is  itself  a  somnolent  institu- 
tion compared  with  Scotland  Yard  or  an  American 
"  Central  Station,"  is  full  of  ancient  inscriptions  from 
the  catacombs  in  erudite  abbreviated  Latin.  Along  the 
front  of  a  pension,  not  far  oif,  I  read  every  day  that  fine 
old  sentence  from  one  of  the  fathers  :  "  Per  varias  hcic 
cetates  et  tempora  vitce  omnes  atque  ceternam  tendimus 
patriam"  and  "  Dis  3 f ambus"  from  half  a  dozen  tombs, 


MODERN  ITALY.  413 

meets  me  every  time  I  ascend  the  stairways  to  my  own 
rooms. 

In  fact,  the  intrusion  of  classic  association  and  tra- 
dition into  the  commonplace  life  of  every  day  is  inces- 
sant. Every  morning  our  butter  comes  on  the  table 
stamped  with  an  image  of  the  she-wolf  suckling  Rom- 
ulus and  Remus,  a  favorite  print  here;  and  it  is  a  sad 
come  down  to  read  S.  P.  Q.  R. — those  imperial  initials, 
so  fraught  with  transcendent  power  and  meaning  to  our 
school-boy  mind — on  the  municipal  street-carts  and  the 
caps  of  the  city  lamp-lighters. 

It  seems  like  calling  up  the  spirits  from  another  and 
far-off  world  ;  and  yet  that  world,  perhaps,  was  much 
like  our  own.  Any  one  going  through  the  galleries 
of  the  Vatican  and  Capitol,  where  there  are  thousands 
and  thousands  of  statues  and  busts,  would  be  struck,  I 
think,  with  the  likeness  of  the  old  Roman  politicians 
of  the  Republican  period  to  the  politicians  of  our  own 
country,  particularly  those  of  the  South  and  Southwest 
of  the  generation  just  previous  to  the  war.  There  is 
the  same  gaunt,  meagre,  self-reliant  face  and  figure,  and 
often  that  half-careless  and  shabby  swing  or  slouch  of 
the  body. 

I  have  before  mentioned  that  the  Italian  of  to-day 
resembles  strongly  the  best  American  type  of  this  mo- 
ment,— the  man  with  fine-cut,  intellectual  face,  sym- 
metrical form  of  body,  and  light,  elastic  step, — that 
type  which  seems  to  prefigure  the  coining  American 
man  when  the  race  shall  have  fully  sloughed  off  the 
grossness  and  dross  of  its  heterogeneous  mixture  and 
evolved  its  own  distinctive  form. 

There  is  even  now  a  strong  parallel  between  the 
physical  appearance  of  the  two  people  which  you  can 
trace  down  into  detail  and  to  classes.  The  soldiery  of 
New  Italy  strongly  resemble  the  best  regiments  of  our 
volunteers.  They  are  both  the  armies  of  freedom.  The 
upper  middle  classes  of  Italy,  the  hope  of  the  new  king- 
dom, have  much  the  appearance  of  the  middle  classes 

35* 


414  MODERN  ITALY. 

of  our  own  country, — the  rank  and  file  of  the  Repub- 
lican party.  Both  classes  are  doing  the  same  work  for 
their  respective  countries, — leading  them  up  and  onward, 

I  may  as  well  say  here,  for  fear  of  mislead  ing;  that 
the  Romans  themselves  acknowledge  no  kinship  in  any 
way  with  any  Northern  nation.  From  the  high  plane 
of  their  descent  and  traditions  they  look  down  on  us 
all,  English,  Americans,  Germans,  and  Russians,  as 
barbarians.  They  are  too  polite  to  say  this,  and  irre- 
proachably courteous  in  their  demeanor, — noblesse  oblige, 
— but,  nevertheless,  they  think  it.  They  are  polite  and 
kind,  not  because  it  is  our  due,  but  because  they  owe  it 
to  their  name  and  heritage.  This  feeling  of  infinite 
superiority  extends  to  the  lowest  classes,  who  all  look  on 
themselves  as  old  families  compared  with  the  outside 
world.  Notwithstanding,  they  look  on  all  foreigners  as 
a  fair  subject  of  plunder, — poor  wrecks  sent  by  a  kind 
Providence  to  be  stripped  and  overcharged.  I  think 
tiie  stranger  in  Italy  pays  just  about  double  for  every- 
thing. I  have  seen  oranges  sold  out  of  the  same  basket 
at  one  price  to  the  Roman  and  at  more  than  double  to 
forestieri.  A  curious  illustration  of  this  is  found  in 
physicians'  bills.  The  regularly  accepted  tariff  of  the 
average  physician  is,  for  a  visit  to  an  Italian,  ten  lira 
(about  two  dollars);  for  a  visit  to  a  stranger,  twenty 
lira.  The  populace  thus,  by  a  motion  of  their  own, 
levy  a  high  export  duty  on  all  goods  sold  out  of  their 
country,  or  to  be  taken  out,  and  even  on  services  ren- 
dered to  an  outsider. 

Living  is  very  cheap  in  Italy  for  many  reasons. 
Labor  is  to  be  had  in  abundance  at  a  few  cents  a  day  ; 
lodging  or  house-rent  comes  to  little,  because  the  solid 
stone  dwellings,  built  for  a  once  greatly  larger  popula- 
tion, are  still  there,  and  are  a  free  gift  to  the  present 
generation ;  the  cormorant  middleman  has  not  come 
yet,  and  the  fish  of  the  sea  and  generous  fruits  of  the 
earth,  olives,  figs,  grapes,  cost  almost  nothing.  But.  for 
the  stranger  on  the  trodden  highways  of  travel,  all 


MODERN  ITALY.  415 

these  things  might  as  well  not  be.  Among  themselves, 
the  commoner  classes  of  Italy,  and  indeed  of  all  Europe, 
live  with  an  economy  that  is  painful,  and  excites  one's 
involuntary  pity,  but  the  traveller  cannot  share  in  the 
advantages  of  the  cheap  prices  which  this  brings  about. 
Accounts  in  France  are  kept  in  francs,  and  here  in  lira, 
pieces  of  about  twenty  cents,  which  tends  to  economy, 
the  mind  making  that  the  unit  of  expense,  instead  of 
the  dollar,  as  with  us.  The  poorer  people  buy  and  sell 
and  keep  their  accounts  in  centesimi,  the  one-fifth  part 
of  our  cent.  There  is  a  small  copper  coin  in  circulation 
here  in  value  two  centesimi, — two-fifths  of  a  cent, — and 
in  Austria  they  have  a  coin  of  just  half  that  value,  or 
two  mills  of  our  system.  It  is  almost  impossible  for 
us  to  feel  that  such  a  coin  represents  a  distinct  value, 
or  can  purchase  anything,  or  be  worth  having  or  saving, 
but  to  the  people  of  Europe  it  is  a  sharp  fact.  It  is 
these  centesimi  coins,  I  fear,  that  make  communism. 

The  new  central  post-office  on  the  piazza  San  Sil- 
vestro  is  a  fair  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  the  new 
government  is  changing  the  face  of  old  Home.  The 
building  is  a  spacious  pile  of  confiscated  convent  prop- 
erty. A  convent  in  Rome,  I  should  say,  means  what 
we  commonly  call  a  monastery.  You  enter  it  on  either 
side  by  a  handsome  hallway,  possibly  fifty  feet  high, 
certainly  forty,  whose  sides  are  adorned  by  immense 
panels  of  oil-paintings, — emblematic  pictures  of  the 
genius  of  the  railway  and  the  telegraph.  Once  over 
the  tessellated  pavements  of  these  fine  arches  you  enter 
a  grand  interior  court.  So  munificent  is  the  provision 
of  room  that  this  court  or  piazza  is  a  beautiful  square, 
one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  in  length  and  breadth,  lovely 
with  fountains,  flowers,  statuary,  green  plots  of  grass, 
and  with  a  covered  corridor  frescoed  on  ceiling  and 
wall  and  paved  with  bright  marbles  stretching  all  the 
length  of  its  exterior.  Around  this  court  the  building 
proper  rises  in  three  grand  stories. 


416  MODERN  IT  ALT. 

There  are  rooms  and  offices  for  every  conceivable 
purpose,  and  those  for  the  accommodation  of  the  public 
nearly  always  in  duplicate, — one  for  men  and  one  for 
women.  All  these  rooms  are  frescoed  or  painted,  and 
equipped  with  furniture  of  massive  style  and  artistic 
design.  So  lavish  is  the  embellishment  that  the  corri- 
dor affords  a  walk  of  six  hundred  feet  of  continuous 
pictorial  design,  much  of  it  fantastic  and  quaint,  and 
all  on  the  theme  either  of  the  railroad  or  telegraph-wire, 
steam  or  fire.  The  building  has  just  been  opened  to  the 
public,  and  is  daily  thronged  with  groups  of  aesthetic 
Italians — which  means  the  lower  classes  as  well  as  what 
we  call  the  educated — discussing  with  interest  and  ani- 
mation the  taste  and  execution  of  the  work. 

To  present  fairly  the  liberality  and  enlightened  pro- 
vision of  the  Roman  government,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  Rome  is  a  city  not  one-third  as  large  as 
Philadelphia,  and  that  its  people  do  not  have  the 
habit  of  writing  and  communication.  There  is,  for 
instance,  no  newspaper  mail  at  all  as  compared  with 
ours.  There  are  no  large  business  establishments 
flooding  a  whole  continent  or  the  world  with  circulars. 
In  fact,  the  circular  is  not  known  here  in  our  sense. 
Finally,  of  the  quarter  of  a  million  people  here,  there 
are  vast  numbers  who  never  either  send  or  receive  a 
letter.  I  doubt  if  the  amount  of  business  of  this  office 
is  one-tenth  that  of  ours.  As  an  illustration  of  the 
different  habits  of  the  people,  among  the  wealth  of 
rooms  in  the  building  (and  there  are  so  many  that 
they  seem  at  loss  sometimes,  I  think,  to  know  how  to 
label  them)  there  is  one  set  apart  for  the  public  and 
common  use  of  any  one  who  wants  to  write  his  letters 
or  address  them,  or  do  anything  of  the  kind  at  the 
office.  This  room,  all  brilliant  with  painting,  had  in 
it  four  small  tables,  neatly  fitted  out  with  stationery, 
ink,  pens,  blotters,  etc.,  two  seats  to  each  table,  and 
was,  in  fact,  a  charming  little  retreat.  Just  one  seat 
was  occupied.  IP  Philadelphia,  or  New  York,  or 


MODERN  ITALY.  417 

Boston,  one  hundred  chairs  would  be  kept  pretty  well 
filled. 

Even  in  so  purely  democratic  a  matter  as  post-office 
accommodation,  both  for  the  people  at  large  and  the 
men  who  serve  them,  we  have  something  to  learn  from 
a  monarchy. 

Sunday  is  the  central  day  of  the  week  in  Rome  m 
social  and  civil  as  well  as  in  religious  life.  Parliament, 
or  congress,  sits  on  this  day  as  on  any  other.  Most  of 
the  shops  are  open,  although  the  attendance  at  church 
is  good.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  mystery  to  me  where  the 
people  in  the  churches  come  from,  as  the  streets  are 
full  and  the  town  busy.  Political  meetings  are  gen- 
erally fixed  for  Sunday,  although  there  are  not  many 
of  them.  The  fresh  cartoons  appear  on  the  walls  and 
in  the  shops  on  Sunday.  It  is  the  visiting  day,  and 
the  day  for  putting  on  cleanly-washed  clothes  among 
the  poor  people.  It  is  a  brilliant  day  on  the  Corso, 
that  lively  little  avenue  being  crowded  with  equipages, 
and  blue  and  scarlet  with  uniforms.  In  the  evening 
there  is  always  the  opera  of  the  week,  and  in  the  pri- 
vate houses  balls  and  receptions.  This  social  use  of 
the  day  is  not  confined  to  the  Italians  or  Roman 
Catholics,  but  holds  among  Protestants,  and  English 
and  Americans  as  well,  who  readily  fall  in  with  the 
social  usages  of  the  country,  and  give  their  dinner- 
parties and  receptions  according  to  its  customs.  It  is  a 
national  or  Continental,  not  a  religious,  characteristic. 

It  is  to  be  said  for  the  Italians,  if  we  would  present 
the  question  fairly,  that,  while  it  is  perfectly  natural 
and  a  matter  of  course  among  them  to  use  Sunday  for 
their  pleasures  and  recreation,  it  is  also  perfectly  natural 
and  a  matter  of  course  with  them,  as  it  is  not  with  us, 
to  go  to  church  and  worship  devoutly  on  week-days. 
Service  is  going  on  all  the  time  in  the  numerous 
churches  here,  and  fairly  well  attended.  You  can  hear 
a  sermon  every  day  in  the  week  if  you  want  to.  Some 

bb 


418  MODERN  ITALY. 

people  here  perhaps  do.  A  good  number  hear  mass 
every  day,  and  a  vast  number  enter  their  churches 
daily  for  personal  and  private  prayers.  If  the  Italians 
carry  their  pleasures  into  Sunday,  as  we  do  not,  they 
also  carry  their  religion  into  the  six  week-days,  as  we 
do  not. 

The  whole  Sunday  question  is  at  bottom  like  so 
many  others,  one  of  climate  and  habit  of  life.  The 
differences  grow  out  of  different  modes  of  life  induced 
by  different  clime  and  land.  These  people,  having 
warm  sun  and  soft  skies  the  year  round,  live  out-of- 
doors  all  the  time,  and  have  no  family-life,  in  our 
sense,  where  the  family  lives  from  morning  to  night 
within  walls  to  itself.  They  could  not  adopt  our  soli- 
tary observance  of  Sunday,  simply  because  they  have 
no  close  houses  to  shut  themselves  up  in.  Our  ordi- 
nary habits  of  life  to  them  would  be  imprisonment. 
They  live  on  the  street,  under  the  trees,  out  by  the 
fountains,  in  open  gardens,  in  their  cool  marble 
churches,  grand  and  lofty,  and  in  the  stone-flagged 
plazas.  If  they  stop  working  on  Sunday  they  must 
see  each  other. 

Once  upon  a  time,  hundreds  of  years  ago,  there  lived 
here  a  tailor  called  Pasquino  so  witty  that  his  sayings 
were  the  talk  of  the  town,  and  brought  him  custom  from 
all,  both  high  and  low,  who  loved  to  come  to  his  little 
shop  and  hear  in  clever  phrase  all  the  pungent  scandal 
of  the  day.  This  tailor-shop  was  a  kind  of  liberal  club 
of  those  days.  Right  opposite  it,  on  the  angle  of  a  wall 
of  a  palace,  stood  a  large  statue  of  some  person — as 
is  so  often  the  case  here — unknown.  The  friends  of 
Pasquino  after  his  death,  unwilling  to  give  up  their 
diversion  of  witty  criticism  and  satire,  still  kept  on 
forging  their  sharp  comments  on  public  men  and 
passing  events,  hanging  them  in  written  form  on  the 
base  of  this  statue  for  the  amusement  of  the  public. 
•The  statue  very  easily  took  the  name  of  Pasquino.  •  To 


MODERN  ITALY.  419 

help  the  thing  along,  the  statue  pretended  to  talk  with 
a  neighboring  river-god  in  marble  across  the  way,  the 
comments  taking  the  form  of  dialogue,  or  sometimes 
point-blank  question  and  answer.  From  this  incident 
we  have  our  word  pasquinade.  The  sayings  were 
written  and  put  up  in  the  night,  the  authorities  taking 
them  down  in  the  daytime,  but  they  could  not  stop 
people  circulating  from  mouth  to  mouth  the  clever 
sayings  which  had  been  found  there  in  the  morning, 
and  which  were  the  news  of  the  day. 

This  thing  kept  up  for  generations  and  became  a 
cherished  usage.  So  exasperated  were  the  popes,  who 
were  severely  lampooned,  that  they  removed  therefrom 
the  river-god  to  the  museum  of  the  Capitol,  and  one 
of  them,  Adrian  V.,  wanted  to  remove  Pasquino  also, 
and  throw  him  into  the  Tiber.  His  owner,  a  duke, 
objected  to  this  and  defended  him,  and  here  he  is  yet, 
badly  mutilated,  little  more  than  a  trunk,  but  talking 
still.  His  last  great  pasquinade  was  during  the  recent 
sitting  of  the  Vatican  Council,  when  there  hung  from 
the  stumps  of  feet  one  morning  the  inscription,  "  Free 
as  the  Council,"  a  bitter  epigram  to  those  who  under- 
stand the  inside  working  of  that  caucus-ridden  instru- 
ment of  the  Vatican  '*  machine." 

For  centuries  this  Pasquino  image  was  the  only  organ 
of  public  opinion  in  Rome,  and  so  strong  is  the  force 
of  habit  that  public  opinion,  to-day  finds  expression  in 
this  u  placard"  form  in  preference  to  any  other.  The. 
newspaper  has  come, — a  great  modern  institution,— but 
the  Italian  mind  hardly  receives  it.  It  prefers  the 
placard,  and  uses  it  in  every  way.  Political  attacks 
are  made  on  cheap  colored  cartoons  sold  in  the  shops 
and  on  the  stands  as  we  sell  newspapers.  Religious 
disputes  are  carried  on  in  printed  placards  posted  on 
the  churches,  and  so  many  of  them  are  they  that  they 
very  thoroughly  cover  the  town.  Rome  has  been  quite 
excited  for  some  weeks  over  a  discussion  as  to  the 
adoration  of  the  Virgin,  and  it  is  entirely  carried  on 


420  MODERN  ITALY. 

by  printed  posters.  One  morning  you  find  a  card  of 
one  side  posted  all  over  the  place,  and  groups  gathered 
reading  it.  In  a  day  or  two,  or  perhaps  the  third  or 
fourth, — things  move  slowly, — appears  a  reply  similarly 
posted.  The  people  read  it,  and  at  their  homes  talk 
over  it.  Printing,  of  course,  is  cheap,  and  also  posting. 
This  usage  extends  even  to  advertisements,  which  will 
not  go  into  the  papers,  although  advertising  is  cbeap 
enough,  six  to  eight  cents  a  line  for  one  insertion. 
Does  an  Italian  want  to  let  an  apartment  he  never 
thinks  of  advertising  in  a  paper,  but  has  a  package  of 
hand-bills  struck  off,  and  placards  the  town.  The 
little  advertising  there  is  in  the  papers  is  done  by 
English  and  Americans. 

Under  these  circumstances  the  Italian  papers,  although 
there  are  plenty  of  them,  are  naturally  thin  and  weak. 
They  are  all  poor  and  able  to  spend  but  little  money. 
The  Italian  does  not  ask  for  news  with  his  morning 
maccaroni,  and  they,  in  consequence,  do  not  give  it  to 
him.  He  knows  nothing  of  the  world  outside  of  his 
city,  and  there  is  no  correspondence.  Only  in  one 
department  do  they  compare  with  us,  and  in  that  they 
often  surpass  us.  Their  editorials  are  often  strong, 
polished,  timely,  and  scholarly.  Here  the  paper,  re- 
jected by  the  mass  of  the  people  for  their  common  uses, 
has  a  special  function.  It  is  the  channel  adopted  by 
the  leaders  of  New  Italy  to  reach  the  thought  and  influ- 
ence of  the  Nation.  There  is  generally  but  one  article, 
such  as  we  call  •" editorial/7  a  real  leader,  occupying  the 
first  column  of  the  first  page.  It  grasps  the  leading 
issue  of  the  day  and  handles  it  with  vigor  and  depth. 
There  is  a  scope  and  breadth  about  many  of  these  arti- 
cles which  reveal  in  their  writers  a  large  knowledge  of 
the  world,  and  that  trained  habit  of  thought  which 
comes  from  the  discipline  of  education.  In  this  spirit 
and  style  the  great  questions  of  Church  and  State,  of 
the  right  to  the  ballot,  of  the  use  of  an  army,  of  inter- 
vention or  non-intervention  in  European  politics,  of 


MODERN  ITALY.  421 

home  political  construction,  and  the  hourly  arising 
problems  and  complications  of  the  new  Union  are  daily 
discussed,  and  this  high  plane  of  discussion  is  one  of 
the  most  encouraging  and  hopeful  signs  for  the  Italy 
that  is  to  come.  This  is  not,  of  course,  the  character 
of  all  the  editorials,  nor  of  those  of  all  papers,  but  it  is 
of  many  of  them, — enough  to  give  tone  and  a  character 
to  the  general  press,  or  at  least  a  liberal  portion  of  it. . 

The  reason  for  the  strength  and  high  character  of 
this  class  of  articles  is  clear, — they  are  not  written  for 
the  mass  of  the  people,  who  would  perhaps  be  best 
moved  by  a  very  passionate  and  an  ad  captandum  style 
of  writing,  but  for  the  men  who  control  and  lead. 
They  are  the  work  of  leaders  reaching  out  to  other 
leaders  and  men  of  influence  and  power.  At  present 
only  these  use  the  newspapers.  The  average  Italian 
lets  it  alone.  Hence  the  strong  "  Vatican"  articles  ; 
the  strong  "  Parliamentary"  articles ;  the  strong  "  Rad- 
ical" articles,  which  one  sees  every  week  here  in  the 
several  leading  journals.  The  newspaper  is  a  real 
channel  here  for  the  statesman. 

The  usual  price  for  a  daily  paper  in  Rome  is  two 
cents.  The  circulation  is  small,  but  very  many  persons 
read  the  same  sheet, — perhaps  an  average  of  ten.  In 
time  the  newspaper  will  be  a  great  popular  institution 
in  Italy,  for  the  Italians  are  a  people  given  to  reading, 
and  fond  of  talking  about  what  they  read,  but  at  pres- 
ent it  is  foreign  and  strange  to  the  ingrained  habits  of 
centuries  and  must  work  its  way  slowly. 


86 


422  MODERN  ITALY. 


CHAPTER    XLVI. 

THE   ITALIAN    LIFE. 

KINSHIP  or  THE  MODERN  ITALIAN  AND  THE  AMERICAN — THE 
VISIBLE  BLOOD-TIE  or  THOUSANDS  or  YEARS  AGO — THE 
COMMON  EDUCATION  OF  ITALY  AND  THAT  OF  THE  UNITED 
STATES — THE  Two  CIVILIZATIONS — BRIGHT  SIDE  OF  LOWER 
CLASS  LIFE  IN  ITALIC — RULE  OF  THE  ROMAN  MIND — POLIT- 
ICAL AND  SOCIAL  END  OF  TRAVEL. 

WHEN  one  goes  to  Italy  expecting  to  find  there  in 
the  people  of  to-day  the  full-blooded  descendants  of  the 
Roman  senators  and  imperial  pro-consuls  who  stalked 
like  demigods  through  our  well-remembered  school- 
books,  he  suffers,  of  course,  a  foolish  disappointment. 
In  race  and  blood  the  modern  Italian  is  largely  the 
same  manner  of  man  as  \ve  are.  His  national  fibre,  in 
good  part,  is  like  our  own,  Teutonic.  Our  race  an- 
cestry in  one  great  branch — say  in  the  male  line — is 
the  same,  and  our  common  ancestor  is  not  very  far  back. 
Some  few  thousand  years  ago  our  Teuton  forefathers 
came  swarming  together  out  of  those  wondrous  cavern- 
ous shades  in  Asia  which  neither  Revelation  nor  history 
have  yet  illuminated;  and  only  about  twelve  to  fifteen 
hundred  years  ago  they  separated,  the  Gothic  branch 
pouring  over  Southern  Europe,  Italy,  lower  France, 
Spain,  the  Scandinavian  branch  streaming  over  North- 
ern Europe.  Certain  Gothic  tribes  flooded  over  the 
Alps  into  Italy,  washed  out  the  civilized  people  and 
government  of  the  soil  and  camped  there  in  history. 
Certain  other  tribes,  their  Scandinavian  kin,  pushed 
for  the  northward  and  westward  to  barbarous  Britain, 
swept  away  the  rude  people  and  institutions,  and  made 


THE  ITALIAN  LI  Ft:.  423 

their  home  there.  Substitute  the  vanquished,  savage 
Celt  in  place  of  the  vanquished,  polished  Latin,  and  the 
modern  Italian  and  Englishman,  or  American,  are  the 
same.  When  the  Gothic  Teutons  that  came  into  Italy 
submerged  the  people  they  found  there  and  drove  them 
out  of  history,  they  took  from  them  a  classic  literature 
and. art,  and  a  social  culture,  that  were  the  product  of 
the  two  highest  civilizations  the  world  had  yet  seen. 
When  the  Scandinavian  Teutons  that  came  into  Britain 
had  disposed  of  its  barbarian  population,  they  found 
little  there  that  was  much  better  than  themselves,  and, 
consequently,  took  little  by  their  conquest  save  the  bare 
soil. 

In  all  this  our  modern  Italian  relatives  have  this 
great  advantage  of  us:  their  fathers  married  into  a 
better  old  family  than  did  ours.  But  even  in  these  old 
families  there  was  a  distant,  although  forgotten,  rela- 
tionship, for  the  Celt  and  Latin  were  both  of  Aryan 
stock.  The  modern  nationalities  of  Italy  and  the 
United  States  are  not,  therefore,  quite  brothers,  but  we 
are  certainly  cousins  in  the  family  of  the  world. 

It  is  this  far-off  but  strong  blood-tie  which  accounts 
for  the  elusive  traces  of  similarity,  sometimes  in  phys- 
ique, sometimes  in  mind,  between  the  Italian  and 
American  which  constantly  challenges  one's  attention 
in  Italy.  The  two  people  are  so  different  and  yet 
often  so  alike.  The  Italian  is  the  American  with  his 
aesthetic  and  higher  side  fully  and  roundly  developed, 
but  to  the  neglect  of  his  practical  energies  and  lower 
activities.  The  American  is  the  Italian  with  his  lower 
or  money-getting  faculties  acutely  developed  to  the 
neglect  of  his  aesthetic  and  higher  culture.  This  is  a 
rather  blunt  and  not  very  complimentary  way  to  our- 
selves of  putting  it,  but  it  at  least  defines  sharply  the 
complementary  relation  which  we  seem  to  hold  to  each 
other  as  peoples.  We  are  the  fame  people  differentiated 
by  the  special  development  for  fifteen  hundred  years 
of  different  sides  of  our  nature. 


424  MODERN  ITALY. 

It  is  the  advantage  of  comparative  social  studies  that 
they  enable  us  to  see  ourselves  somewhat  as  other  peo- 
ples see  us,  and  as  we  cannot  see  ourselves.  We  Ameri- 
cans value  certain  things  and  prize  them  highly,  and 
rank  ourselves  above  all  the  world  because  we  possess 
them,  and  despise  those  nations  who  do  not  possess 
them.  The  Italian  values  certain  other  things,  achieves 
them,  is  proud  of  himself  because  he  has  achieved  them, 
and  contemns  those  who  cannot  understand  his  way  of 
thinking  and  living.  We  despise  the  Italian  as  igno- 
rant and  lazy ;  he  looks  down  on  us  as  rude  and  uncul- 
tivated. He  is  just  as  honest  and  sincere  in  his  con- 
tempt of  us  as  we  in  ours  of  him.  The  decision  must 
come  from  some  higher  and  broader  court  than  either 
nation. 

The  average  Italian  has  leisure  and  cultivation,  and 
he  despises  the  American  who  has  neither.  The  aver- 
age American  has  food  and  clothing  and  work,  and  he 
despises  the  Italian  who  often  has  none  of  them. 

Let  us  try  to  look  at  this  question  a  moment  with 
Italian  eyes  and  not  our  own.  In  inviting  a  competi- 
tive international  comparison  the  American  would 
probably  put  forward  as  his  first  and  strongest  claim 
to  superiority,  "  We  are  the  better-educated  people." 
"No/7  the  Italian  would  surely  say;  "you  are  not. 
More,  you  are  grossly  uneducated.  To  be  sure,  you  can 
all  read  and  write  and  have  an  illusory  proficiency  in 
the  lower  branches  of  education,  but  in  all  higher  edu- 
cation your  national  mind  is  a  blank.  Your  average 
citizen  can  read  type,  but  he  cannot  read  a  Titian  or  a 
Fra  Angelico,  as  our  humblest  people  can.  He  under- 
stands arithmetic,  or  book-keeping,  or  contracting,  but 
he  cannot  understand  a  work  of  Michael  Angelo  or 
Phidias.  He  would  not  know  a  Praxiteles  if  he  found 
it  on  the  roadside,  and  could  not  enjoy  it  if  it  were 
given  to  him.  Even  your  wealthy  classes  are  too 
uneducated  to  purchase  intelligently  in  our  art  mar- 


THE  ITALIAN  LIFE.  425 

ket.  We  send  over  to  you  our  refuse — slop-sh;  p  paint- 
ings and  ready-made  statuary — because  you  prefer  it, 
and  will  not  buy  our  best  work.  Engravings  of  the 
masters  will  not  sell  in  your  great  cities  against  mod- 
ern, sentimental  crudities  that  would  not  be  exposed  for 
sale  in  an  interior  Italian  town.  Your  millionaires  are 
incompetent  to  select  the  simplest  picture  for  their 
swollen  houses  filled  with  all  gross  luxuries.  The 
walls  of  their  halls  and  drawing-rooms  would  often 
offend  the  eye  and  shock  the  taste  of  many  an  Italian 
peasant.  You  have  a  wonderful  faculty  for  the  prac- 
tical application  of  the  exact  sciences  to  common  uses, 
which  fits  you  pre-eminently  to  be  laborers  and  traders 
for  all  the  world, — to  supply  their  bodily  wants, — but 
you  have  not  the  higher  flower  of  civilization,  that 
culture  and  perfection  of  those  nobler  faculties  which 
makes  the  whole  man  a  desirable  and  gracious  being. 
You  are  fit  to  be  manufacturers  and  mechanics  for  all 
men,  but  not  to  sit  with  them.  You  have  not  that 
mental  and  social  grace  which  make  companionship 
with  you  desirable.  You  are  excellent  toilers  and  labor- 
ers, but  you  do  not  get  higher, — you  never  reach  the 
intellectual  and  artistic  side  of  work.  Even  your 
professional  mechanic  is  not  the  artisan  of  Europe." 

Now  this  reply  does  raise  the  question,  What  is 
education  ?  And  if  there  are  varying  educations,  which 
is  the  higher  and  better  ?  Which  makes  the  higher 
and  fuller  and  happier  man?  Which  is  the  higher 
accomplishment,  the  power  to  understand  at  once  and 
thoroughly  enjoy  a  patent  rat-trap  or  a  piece  of  sculp- 
ture? Is  it  a  greater  national  glory  to  produce  a  sew- 
ing-machine or  a  steam-tug,  or  a  school  of  art?  Is  it 
a  higher  intellectual  capacity  to  be  able  to  read  news- 
papers and  science  primers,  or  Correggios  and  Guidos 
and  cathedrals  ? 

Leaving  this  question  open,  the  advocate  of  the 
American  life  would  probably  select  his  ultimate  posi- 
tion in  the  general  comfort  and  well-being  of  the  body 

36* 


426  MODERN  ITALY. 

of  the  nation,  and  from  this  intrench raent  argue,  "We 
are  a  prosperous  people ;  every  man  among  us  is  well 
fed,  well  clad,  well  housed."  And  so  we  are  in  com- 
parison with  Italy  or  any  other  European  people. 
"  But,"  says  the  Italian,  "granting  all  that,  is  the  body 
the  man  ?  Is  its  care  and  comfort  the  pursuit  of  hap- 
piness ?  The  corpulent  hog  is  well  fed  and  warm  and 
well  housed,  but  what  is  he?  You  have  attained  phys- 
ical well  being  and  material  prosperity  at  the  neglect 
of  the  culture  of  the  higher  man.  Your  prosperous, 
well-to-do,  perhaps  wealthy  man — the  man  you  call 
successful — is  often  of  coarse  instincts,  of  ignorant  man- 
ners, of  unpleasant  and  vulgar  address.  He  is  devoid 
of  that  personal  cultivation — the  culture  of  his  mind 
and  affections — which  makes  association  with  him 
agreeable,  and  which,  if  he  possessed,  would  constitute 
for  himself  a  far  higher  and  truer  source  of  enjoyment 
than  anything  that  food  and  clothing  and  gross  luxuries 
of  any  kind,  or  to  any  amount,  can  bring  him.  He 
has  sacrificed  everything  that  is  high  in  him  to  the 
getting  of  material  comfort,  and  the  best  one  can  say 
for  him  is,  that  he  can  never  understand  his  utter  men- 
tal and  moral  poverty,  his  meagreness  and  un loveliness 
as  a  man.  The  poor  Italian,  with  leisure,  gracious 
manners,  fine  perceptions,  refined  instincts,  and,  withal, 
content;  with  a  capacity  to  enjoy  the  highest  develop- 
ment of  human  thought  and  genius,  is  an  infinitely 
higher  type  of  man.  What  is  even  your  power  of 
money?  You  can  make  money,  which  is  the  lowest 
relation  of  man  to  wealth.  You  cannot  spend  it,  which 
is  the  highest  relation  of  man  to  wealth.  Our  poor,  culti- 
vated peasant  is  the  superior  of  your  vulgar  rich  man. 
Man  does  not  live  by  bread  alone;  our  civilization  is  a 
moral,  not  a  material  one,  and  must  not  be  tried  by 
material  tests." 

Here  is  another  issue  which  must  be  left  to  the  decis- 
ion of  some  tribunal  which  is  neither  American  noi 
Italian. 


THE   ITALIAN   LIFE.  427 

Whatever  may  have  been  our  popular  and  conven- 
tional opinion  of  the  Italian  in  times  past,  certain  it  is 
that  the  educated  thought  and  thinking  travel,  both  of 
England  and  America,  are  every  day  pronouncing  a 
higher  verdict  on  the  modern  Italian.  And  it  is  likely 
that  this  judgment  will  strengthen  as  we  come  to  know 
more  of  him  from  personal  knowledge,  and  as  we  grad- 
ually lift  ourselves  more  and  more  above  a  provincial 
plane  of  mind. 

The  modern  Italian  has  virtues  which  are  not  ours, 
an  education  which  is  not  ours,  a  national  wealth  which 
is  not  ours,  a  national  ambition  which  is  not  ours.  He 
is  badly  handicapped  by  the  centuries,  but  he  has  al- 
ready achieved  wonderful  things  both  in  political  and 
social  advancement.  He  has  broken  the  fetters  of  a 
superstitious  bondage,  of  whose  appalling  and  merciless 
power  we  have  no  conception.  He  has  set  out  towards 
self-government,  with  the  achievement  of  a  federal 
Union  of  states  in  the  face  of  obstacles  which  make 
our  work  in  177G  to  1789  seem  crude  and  infantile. 
He  has  established  an  order  of  society  by  classes,  super- 
imposed one  above  the  other,  but  not  so  greatly  at  the 
cost  of  the  lower  orders  as  in  England.  One  never 
meets  in  Italy  the  painful  servility  of  the  lower  class 
Englishman.  The  Italian  peasant  has  the  self-respect 
of  a  prince.  In  this  respect  the  social  structure  of 
Italy  is  a  higher  piece  of  work  than  that  of  England. 
The  modern  Italian  bears  a  most  burdensome  national 
debt  with  a  self-control  and  honesty  which  far  sur- 
passes that  of  the  average  American  State  or  city.  The 
repudiator  has  not  yet  appeared  in  Italian  politics. 

There  is  a  positive  wealth,  too,  throughout  Italy  of 
which  we  have  no  conception,  for  it  is  not  our  idea  of 
wealth,  and  cannot  be  measured  by  statistics,  like  iron 
and  pork  and  cotton.  In  every  country  town  in  Italy 
there  are  vast  treasures  of  art  of  which  the  average 
American  does  not  know  enough  even  to  go  and  see 
when  he  is  over  there.  There  are  no  circulating 


428  MODERN  ITALY. 

libraries  in  the  Italian  provincial  towns,  and  perhaps 
no  reading-circles  or  book-clubs,  those  excellent  insti- 
tutions of  our  country  life,  but  there  are  museums 
stored  with  a  wealth  of  art  and  aesthetic  treasure  such 
as  no  American  city  can  have  at  all,  however  metro- 
politan its  ambition,  descended  palaces  filled  with 
frescos  and  paintings  and  sculpture  by  the  masters,  and 
cathedrals  whose  architecture  and  statues  are  a  liberal 
education  in  themselves.  And  cathedrals  and  palaces 
are  alike  open  to  the  people.  So  overflowing  is  this 
wealth  that  it  cannot  be  enumerated,  and  does  not  get 
even  into  the  guide-books.  The  statuary  in  the  lovely 
cathedral  of  Orvieto,  for  instance,  almost  unseen  by 
the  tourist,  Cardinal  Wiseman  pronounces  to  be  "  the 
largest  and  most  beautiful  collection  of  the  time  of 
Michael  Angelo."  Orvieto  is  a  town  that  over  here 
might  rank  in  our  life  with  Carlisle  in  Pennsylvania, 
or  the  county  towns  of  Massachusetts. 

Still  more,  the  commonest  Italian  is  able  to  under- 
stand and  enjoy  all  this  wealth  of  art  and  education, 
and  does  have  his  enjoyment  of  it.  All  through  Italy 
the  galleries  and  private  palaces,  with  all  their  statuary 
and  paintings  and  tapestries  and  furniture  and  carvings 
and  marbles  and  precious  stones,  are  open  to  the  public. 
On  Sunday,  at  least,  they  are  absolutely  free  to  all 
without  cost  of  any  kind.  The  princely  families  living 
in  them  on  that  day  retire  to  interior  suites  of  apart- 
ments, and  all  day  long  their  halls  and  elegant  salons 
and  magnificent  corridors  and  stairways  are  swept  by 
the  populace.  Imagine  for  a  moment  the  palaces  of 
the  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York,  or  the  costlier  dwellings 
of  Boston  and  Philadelphia  being  opened  in  this  way. 
Yet  this  very  week  the  costliest  art  treasures  of  all  the 
world  in  the  grand  palaces  of  Florence  and  Rome  are 
being  exposed  in  just  this  way. 

It  is  the  most  pleasing  sight  in  all  Italy,  as  it  is  one 
of  the  most  suggestive,  to  wander  into  one  of  these 
lordly  palaces  on  a  Sunday.  Sauntering  quietly  and 


THE   ITALIAN  LIFE.  429 

composedly  through  hall  and  chamber  and  gallery  and 
state-room, you  see  little  groups  of  the  humblest  Italians, 
private  soldiers,  laborers,  peasants,  with  their  wives 
and  sweethearts.  They  stroll  at  will  over  the  palace, 
at  perfect  ease,  discussing  pleasantly  and  intelligently 
among  themselves  the  works  of  art.  You  always  find 
them  clustered  before  the  best  statues  and  the  rarest 
paintings,  arguing  on  their  merits  or  pointing  out  to 
each  other  their  hidden  perfections.  And  this  they  do 
without  the  aid  of  guide-books  or  catalogues,  which,  if 
they  had,  they  most  probably  would  not  read.  They 
are  far  beyond  the  northern  barbarian's  stage  of  culture. 
Again  and  again  this  mortifying  conclusion  is  forced 
on  one  in  such  scenes.  Of  the  people  in  this  drawing- 
room  or  gallery  the  Italians  are  of  the  lower  classes  of 
their  country.  What  do  they  show?  They  have  a 
perfect  ease  of  manner,  grace  of  movement  and  conver- 
sation, an  intelligent  appreciation  of  the  master-work 
around  them.  The  English  and  American  people 
present  are  of  the  better  classes  of  their  countries  or 
they  would  not  be  able  to  be  here.  And  what  do  they 
show  ?  One-half  of  them  at  least  only  ignorance  and 
vulgarity.  Heavy-faced  millionaires,  looking  bored 
and  hopelessly  lost  among  the  finest  treasures  of  the 
world ;  overdressed  daughters,  giggling  and  awkward, 
uncertain  how  to  move  in  a  palace;  wives  with  dull, 
expressionless  faces,  who  you  know  are  going  to  mis- 
pronounce English  if  they  open  their  mouths. 

In  personal  refinement  and  cultivation  and  aesthetic 
education  the  lower  classes  of  Italy  have  reached  a 
point  of  civilization  beyond  that  of  our  poorer  classes, 
and  our  classes  of  uneducated  wealth,  and  it  is  needless 
to  add,  far  beyond  the  similar  classes  of  England. 
Here,  indeed,  is  the  presentable  side  of  the  Italian 
nation,  for  the  higher  classes  do  not  seem  to  improve 
on  the  lower  in  proportion  to  their  advantages.  Their 
education  is  not  advanced  proportionally,  and  they 


430  MODERN   ITALY. 

seem  to  lack  in  virility  and  nerve.  The  fire  of  eon- 
quest,  the  lust  of  achievement,  seem  to  have  died  out 
both  from  the  Gothic  and  Roman  lines  of  bloo.d. 

Perhaps  even  here,  however,  the  Italian  would  take 
issue  and  come  in  with  a  new  claim.  "  We  conquer 
not  any  longer  by  physical  conquest,  as  did  our  fore- 
fathers in  ruder  days,  and  as  you  Northern  nations  essay 
to  do  now.  We  rule  the  world  in  these  latter  ages,  not  by 
force  of  arms,  but  by  force  of  mind.  The  Roman  Law 
to-day  administers  the  justice  of  the  world.  You  see  it 
in  the  flesh  in  your  own  code  of  Louisiana,  and  on  the 
statute  books  of  Colorado  and  Utah,  and  it  is  the  soul  of 
the  Equity  Courts  of  England  and  the  United  States." 

"  And  the  Papacy, — the  Second  Roman  Empire, — is 
it  not  a  magnificent  demonstration  of  the  genius  of  the 
Roman  mind  for  rule?  Is  not  this  grand  ecclesiastical 
empire  the  lineal  successor  of  the  First  Roman  Empire? 
Rome  under  the  Csesars  ruled  the  world  for  half  a  dozen 
centuries  by  force  of  arms, — under  the  Popes  she  has 
ruled"  it,  or  the  greater  part  of  it,  for  twice  six  centuries 
by  force  of  intellect.  She  changed  the  form  of  empire, 
not  the  fact.  And  is  it  not  a  greater  achievement  to 
hold  the  mind  of  the  world  in  subjection  than  its  terri- 
tory ?  This  is  just  what  Rome  did  when  the  Papal 
Pontiffs  took  the  chair  of  the  Imperial  Pontiffs." 

Certain  it  is  there  is  a  subtlety  in  the  Italian  mind 
which  is  beyond  our  power  to  follow,  and  with  which 
we -cannot  successfully  compete.  We  may  condemn  it 
in  morals,  but  there  it  stands  in  fact,  an  intellectual 
development  beyond  our  own,  a  .refinement  or  intensity 
of  mental  action  which  has  not  been  given  us.  On  this 
plane  we  cannot  grapple  with  the  Italian  on  even  terms. 
On  this  field,  which  is  one  of  mental  force,  he  leads  us. 

There  is  no  greater  good  of  foreign  travel  than  this, 
that  it  gives  us  the  opportunity  for  comparative  con- 
trast and  study  of  our  own  country,  our  government, 
our  social  institutions,  our  whole  civilization,  with  those 


THE  ITALIAN  LIFE.  431 

of  other  countries.  It  is  only  against  the  background 
of  other  countries  and  civilizations  that  \ve  can  see  our 
own,  and  detect  their  failings  or  defects,  or  dangerous 
tendencies.  And  these  are  the  points  we  should  look 
for  and  study.  Where  we  are  better  than  other  nations 
— and  that  is,  happily,  in  very  many  things — there  is  no 
danger  ahead,  and  nothing  to  be  won,  and,  consequently 
nothing  to  be  learned.  Where  we  are  behind  other 
peoples  there  may  be  national  danger  in  store  for  us,  and 
lh<  re  is  certainly  something  to  be  achieved  and  secured. 
It  is  on  this  principle  that  in  this  volume  I  have  con- 
sidered chiefly  those  features  of  foreign  life  which  are 
superior  to  ours. 

The  conditions  of  life  for  all  in  this  country  are 
much  higher  and  more  fortunate  than  they  are  now,  or 
ever  have  been  before,  for  any  other  people.  If  there 
is  power  in  the  people  to  govern  themselves,  as  we  all 
believe,  and  on  which  belief  we  hov  staked  our  na-( 
tional  existence,  there  is  no  good  reason  why  all  the 
people  of  this  country  should  not  in  time  reach  the 
privileges  and  culture  and  advancement  which,  in  times 
past  and  in  other  countries,  have  only  been  reached  and 
enjoyed  by  the  very  few  at  the  cost  of  the  many.  This 
is  our  goal,  and  for  this  reason  the  liberal  study  of  the 
institutions  and  civilizations  of  older  countries  is  a  prac- 
tical political  and  social  duty  of  the  American  citizen. 
It  is  part  of  the  education  which  he  owes  to  himself 
and  to  his  country,  that  he  may  discharge  fitly  and 
safely  the  high  functions  of  his  citizenship. 

To  be  of  avail  under  our  structure  of  society  and  gov- 
ernment this  education  must  eorne  directly  to  the  whole 
body  of  the  people,  and  not  to  or  through  one  higher 
class;  and  this,  perhaps,  under  Providence,  is  the  mean- 
ing of  the  surges  of  American  travel  which  yearly  flood 
the  face  of  Europe,  the  countless  hosts  of  a  new  race 
moving  over  an  old  \vorld,  with  gentler  manners  and 
aims,  but  impelled  just  as  blindly  and  unconsciously 
as  the  fateful  hordes  of  their  Gothic  forerunners. 

BOMB. 


APPENDIX. 


HINTS  O*    TRAVEL. 

CUSTOMS  OF  TRAVEL  ABROAD  AND  AT  HOME — THE  RED  BOOKS 
— SOME  UNWRITTEN  LAWS  OF  EUROPEAN  LIFE — HAND-BOOK 
EQUIPMENT  —  THE  ' '  IMPEDIMENTA"  —  ROUTES  — RAILWAY 
USAGES — HOTELS — LUGGAGE —  GUIDES  —  SPECIAL  CENTRES 
or  SHOPPING — FOOD — LANGUAGES. 

IN  closing  this  series  of  papers  let  me  hastily  throw  together 
some  notes,  the  sum  of  repeated  experiences,  which  may  save, 
perhaps,  to  future  travellers  some  time,  labor,  and  the  annoying 
quest  of  unwritten  information.  The  usages  of  strange  countries 
are  more  foreign  than  their  languages,  and  it  is  these  which  the 
unfamiliar  traveller  needs  to  have  translated. 

Routes. — Distances  are  so  short  in  Europe  that  in  travelling 
in  any  one  country,  or  even  between-  countries,  it  is  hardly  worth 
while  to  try  to  take  everything  in  in  one  consecutive  line  or  trip. 
It  is  better,  if  you  wish  to  see  any  prominent  person,  or  to  be 
at  any  certain  place  at  any  fixed  time,  or  to  accept  an  invitation 
to  visit,  to  do  so,  and  double  on  your  route  for  the  rest  of  your 
journey.  In  other  words,  there  is  no  economy  in  controlling 
your  movements  by  distances,  as  there  generally  is  in  our  vast 
territory.  It  is  better  to  pay  no  attention  to  this,  as  railway 
fares  will  not  be  found  to  be  the  proportionately  larger  item  of 
travelling  expenses  they  are  with  us.  It  is  the  hotels  that  eat 
up  one's  funds. 

From  the  great  centres  of  London  and  Paris,  Rome  and  Ber- 
lin, you  can  work  out  everywhere  with  more  economy  than  by 
trying  to  take  in  all  you  want  to  see  on  a  consecutive  schedule 
of  time  and  route.  Again,  as  a  rule,  there  is  no  economy  in 
Europe  in  buying  through  tickets,  as  there  always  is  with  us. 
One  thousand  miles  of  travel  in  England  and  on  the  Continent, 
made  over  the  same  route,  cost  exactly  the  same  whether  you 
purchase  one  ticket  for  the  entire  route  or  divide  it  into  fifty, 

435 


436  APPENDIX. 

— except  in  the  case  of  a  few  "  circular"  tickets  purchased  through 
agencies  and  sadly  limited  as  to  time  of  use.  Further,  when  you 
are  going  to  stop  off  frequently,  a  long  ticket  may  become  a  posi- 
tive nuisance,  so  hampering  and  embarrassing  are  the  conditions 
and  limitations  of  its  use.  As  a  rule,  it  must  be  vis£d  or  endorsed 
by  somebody  wherever  you  intend  to  use  it  after  having  once 
stopped,  and  this  form  takes  quite  as  much  time  and  trouble 
as  buying  a  new  ticket.  By  a  ridiculous  inversion  of  thought 
and  business  tact,  the  railway  regulations  abroad  are  all  made 
for  the  convenience  of  the  railway  and  police  officials  instead  of 
for  that  of  the  passenger. 

Luggage. — Contrary  to  the  common  impression  at  home,  the 
arrangements  for  handling  baggage  abroad  are  better  and  cheaper 
than  ours.  The  registering  is  just  as  safe  as  our  checking  sys- 
tem. The  only  difference  is  between  a  paper  check  and  a  metal 
one,  while  the  train  and  station  employees  are  infinitely  more 
careful  in  moving  and  storing  baggage  than  with  us.  Only  the 
traveller  must  not  attempt  to  take  care  of  himself  after  the 
American  fashion.  Let  him  trust  himself  at  once  to  a  porter, 
who  for  a  few  pennies  will  arrange  everything,  gather  his  lug- 
gage together,  remove  it  from  the  station,  call  a  good  cab,  and 
give  the  proper  directions  to  the  driver.  The  traveller's  only 
care  should  be  to  secure  the  most  experienced  and  reliable-look- 
ing porter  on  the  ground.  He  will  place  you  in  your  carriage 
in  a  very  few  moments,  and  you  will  get  from  the  station  to 
your  hotel  much  quicker,  cheaper,  and  more  pleasantly  than  you 
can  make  the  same  trip  in  any  American  city  I  know  of.  In 
Italy  a  cab  for  two  persons,  with  a  trunk  and  hand-baggage, 
will  cost  only  from  a  franc  to  a  franc  and  a  half;  in  great  "Lon- 
don, for  the  usual  course,  not  over  fifty  cents. 

Hotels. — Always  select  a  small  hotel  abroad  in  preference  to 
a  large  one  of  the  same  grade.  You  have  better  service  and  are 
more  comfortable.  Europe  is  beginning  to  build  huge  hotels 
after  the  American  fashion,  but  they  are  not  a  success,  and  gen- 
erally combine  the  vices  and  defects  of  both  systems.  On  the 
Continent  hotels  are  advertised  as  first-  and  second-class.  The 
first  is  the  more  elaborate  and  expensive  house,  and  generally 
very  comfortable ;  the  second  is  cheaper,  everything  is  plainer 
and  more  limited,  but  of  its  kind  it  is  solid  and  good.  The  sec- 
ond-class European  hotel  is  not  a  shabby  or  nasty  imitation  of 
a  first-class  one.  The  proprietor  is  not  ashamed  of  the  grade 
of  his  house,  but  advertises  it  openly,  and  is  as  proud  of  keeping 
an  excellent  second-rate  hotel  as  of  doing  anything  else  well  and 
honestly,  in  which  he  differs  largely  from  his  American  brother, 
who  is  always  assuming  to  offer  first-class  accommodations  for 
a  second-class  price.  In  England,  the  railway  hotels,  as  a  rule, 
are  excellent,  and  travellers  need  not  avoid  them  on  principle, 


HINTS  OF   TRAVEL.  437 

as  one  does  here.  They  are  owned  and  managed  by  the  railway 
companies,  and  as  the  road  is  so  they  are. 

Food. — Our  country  is,  of  all  the  world,  the  land  of  good  food, 
cheap,  plenty,  and  in  rich  variety.  There  is  no  European  coun- 
try that  can  begin  to  compare  with  us  in  this  blessing,  and  the 
American  stranger  abroad  must  expect  for  a  time  to  really  suffer 
for  the  want  of  his  accustomed  luxuriance  of  table.  The  poverty 
of  an  English  hotel  breakfast-table  is  something  inexplicable, — 
sole  bacon  and  chops  is  the  same  dreary  fare  all  the  kingdom 
over  and  every  day  in  the  year.  Although  true  to  her  tradi- 
tional reputation  for  grand  roasts  of  beef  and  generous  legs  of 
mutton,  England  does  not  have  at  all  the  sirloin  steak,  the  high- 
est American  conception  of  beef.  Nor  has  she  game  in  our  sense 
and  use  of  it.  Coffee  is  never  good  at  a  British  public  table ; 
the  tea,  however,  is  generally  excellent  and  superior  to  ours. 
Coffee  in  France  is  always  good  and  tea  poor.  In  Italy,  at  a 
provincial  inn,  both  are  looked  on  as  curiosities,  and  served  as 
such  if  one  is  erratic  enough  to  call  for  them. 

The  severe  meagreness  of  an  English  or  Continental  table  is, 
however,  in  its  fruit  and  vegetables.  They  simply  do  not  have 
them  at  all  as  we  know  them.  At  tho  private  tables  of  those 
classes  whose  tastes  are  cultivated  and  somewhat  cosmopolitan 
there  is  some  provision  of  vegetables ;  the  fruit,  however,  will 
be  only  a  miniature  dessert  course.  At  an  English  public  table 
one  gets  a  rigid  and  unvarying  allowance  of  just  two  vegetables, 
— always  the  same, — potatoes  and  Brussels  sprouts.  These  are 
invariably  set  before  one  at  every  inn  without  the  least  change, 
even  when  the  green-grocers' stand  in  the  same  street  may  have 
onions,  beans,  cabbage,  and  others  of  our  coarser  and  plainer 
vegetables  in  reasonable  plenty  for  sale.  I  have  had  them  some- 
times, but  it  was  only  on  a  special  order  and  after  serious  con- 
sultation with  the  inn  authorities.  Fruit  is  rarely  in  the  house, 
and  if  a  peach,  or  bunch  of  grapes,  or  cherries  are  at  last  pro- 
duced, it  is  at  the  price  of  a  peck  or  bushel  of  them  here. 

It  is  this  lack  of  fruits  and  vegetables,  and  tho  consequent 
want  of  their  acidulous  contribution  to  the  blood,  which,  I  think, 
makes  Europe  a  wine-drinking  land.  The  body  demands  this 
acid  for  the  proper  working  of  the  system,  and  gets  it  in  the 
wine.  We  get  it  in  the  fruit  and  vegetables  we  consume  so 
largely  and  continuously.  This  same  reasoning  goes  to  show 
that  we  will  never  be  a  wine-drinking  country, — at  least  while 
our  present  affluence  in  this  kind  of  food  exists.  Our  luxuriance 
of  tropical  fruit — bananas,  oranges,  citrons — is  absolutely  un- 
known to  the  common  table  of  England. 

Hotel  Expenses. — As  a  whole,  the  hotel  expenses  in  England 
and  in  the  larger  cities  of  the  Continent  are  much  heavier  than 
with  us.  The  attendance  is  better,  and  more  personal  and  indi- 

37* 


438  APPENDIX. 

vidual  to  each  guest,  but  the  provision  and  accommodations  are 
more  limited  in  their  range.  Even  at  plain  country  inns  in 
such  places  as  Reading,  Chester,  York,  Carlisle,  one  must  spend 
sixteen  to  twenty  shillings  per  day,  and  then  take  rather  plain 
meals.  The  best  hotels  in  the  same  kind  of  towns  in  this 
country  would  not  cost  over  $2.50  to  $3.  The  whole  hotel 
life  and  management  is  so  different  here  and  abroad  that  it  is 
difficult  to  institute  any  direct  comparison  of  expenses,  but  it  .is 
safe  to  say  that  there  is  not  in  any  large  city  of  all  Europe  any 
hotel  where  one  can  get  the  accommodations  of  the  St.  George, 
in  Philadelphia,  the  Windsor,  in  New  York,  or  the  Grand  Pa- 
cific, in  Chicago,  for  their  moderate  prices,  or  for  anything  like 
them.  In  the  provincial  towns  of  France  and  Italy,  however, 
the  hotels  are  good  and  very  moderate, — two  or  three  dollars 
covering  all  expenses,  including  a  wine  something  better  than 
the  ordinaire. 

Guides,  valets  de  place,  etc. — If  you  have  any  knowledge  at 
all  of  the  language  of  the  country  you  are  in,  or  a  slight  amount 
of  self-reliance,  avoid  guides  altogether,  and  especially  those 
ghastly,  flaccid,  half-alive  creatures  who  start  out  from  behind 
columns  and  dark  recesses  in  old  churches  or  dog  your  steps  in 
gateways  and  porches.  It  is  better  to  miss  some  things  than  to 
have  everything  spoiled  by  the  disagreeable  presence  and  inces- 
sant, unintelligent,  parrot-like  recitation  of  a  mendicant  guide. 
If  you  are  rushing  through  any  town  in  a  few  hours,  it  may  be 
necessary  to  employ  a  guide  to  find  your  way  and  economize 
your  minutes ;  but  if  you  have  reasonable  time,  any  intelligent 
man  can  readily  see  everything  for  himself  with  the  aid  of  his 
hand-book.  Wherever  you  take  a  professional  guide  you  lose 
absolutely  the  impression  and  associations  of  the  place. 

The  red  books. — There  is  no  greater  saving  in  travelling — 
saving  of  time,  money,  fatigue,  temper,  and  opportunity — than 
that  which  is  made  in  the  procuring  of  good  guide-  or  hand- 
books. It  is  economy  to  be  extravagant  in  the  way  of  buying 
them. 

In  the  English  and  French  provincial  towns  which  one  may 
want  to  see  thoroughly  one  always  finds  two  or  three  local  guides, 
— shilling  or  two-franc  pamphlets.  It  is  best  to  buy  them  all. 
Each  will  be  likely  to  have  some  feature  worth  its  cost. 

The  very  best  of  foreign-edited  guide-books  as  a  series  are 
Baedeker's.  They  are  wonderfully  minute  and  explicit,  giving 
a  street-plan  of  nearly  all  towns  of  any  size  or  interest,  and 
going  into  the  detail  of  expenses  of  cabs,  tramways,  hotels, 
rooms,  lights,  fires,  restaurants,  etc.,  in  each  town,  and  also  of 
railway  fares.  The  series  now  covers  pretty  much  the  travelled 
world,  excepting  our  own  country.  They  are  very  honest  and 
upright  in  their  editorship.  I  have  always  found  their  informa- 


HINTS   OF   TRAVEL.  439 

tion  reliable,  and  never  detected  any  evidences  of  blackmailing 
or  advertising  in  the  text,  which  is  more  than  can  be  said  of  a 
good  many  hand-books.  They  are  also  portable, — a  very  essen- 
tial requisite, — and  reasonable  in  price. 

Baedeker's  series  have  also  the  advantage  of  being  published 
in  French  and  German  as  well  as  English,  and  by  getting  the 
edition  in  one  of  these  tongues  one  can  perfect  himself  in  a 
foreign  language  in  using  them. 

Black's  guides  are  good  in  their  excellent  pictures  of  places, 
rivers,  and  scenery,  fine  wood-engravings  of  good  design  and 
finish.  I  have  never  used  their  text. 

Murray's  series  are  elaborate  and  crowded  with  matter,  but 
rather  undigested  and  heavy.  They  seem  to  suit  the  English 
traveller  better  than  the  American  or  Continental. 

The  Satchel  Guide,  issued  from  Boston,  is  an  admirable  little 
work  for  Americans  who  want  to  make  a  hurried  two  or  three 
months'  run  over  Europe.  It  is  scholarly  and  practical,  and 
also  thoroughly  honorable  and  trustworthy  in  its  information. 

Wkitaker's  Almanac,  large  edition,  is  an  almost  indispensa- 
ble companion  for  any  one  travelling  in  England  who  wishes 
to  make  an  intelligent  study  of  the  country  as  he  goes  along, 
and  to  acquaint  himself  with  its  higher  interests,  machinery  of 
government,  form  of  society,  diplomatic  relations,  etc.  It  can 
be  had  anywhere  in  London. 

The  Sportsman's  Guide,  an  established  British  publication, 
is  invaluable  as  a  directory  of  private  estates,  and  of  hunting 
and  fishing  leases  over  England  and  Scotland. 

John  Bellows'  English-French  ami  French  -English  pocket- 
dictionary  is,  in  some  mechanical  respects,  the  most  wonderful 
book  ever  published,  and  the  very  best  tiling  to  be  had  in  the 
way  of  a  travelling  dictionary  of  the  languages.  The  genders 
in  French,  for  instance,  are  all  .distinguished  by  types,  a  femi- 
nine word,  wherever  used,  being  printed  in  Italic.  Many  other 
things  are  thus  presented  at  once  to  the  eye  by  the  use  of  typo- 
graphical signs.  The  condensation  of  incidental  information  is 
also  something  admirable.  It  is  a  volume  of  only  a  few— two 
or  three — inches  in  size,  bound  in  fine  flexible  morocco  for 
pocket  use,  rich  in  excellent  miniature  maps  and  carefully 
worked-out  tables ;  costs  fifteen  shillings,  but  is  amply  worth  it. 

In  visiting  in  Italy  there  are  numerous  French  and  German 
works  of  travel  which  it  is  desirable  to  get  and  read.  One  not 
only  reads  up  the  country  thus,  but  enjoys  the  advantage  at  the 
same  time  of  seeing  it  through  French  or  German  spectacles  as 
well  as  his  own,  and  of  studying  the  French  or  German  mind 
in  the  same  act  with  the  Italian  character.  You  make  thus  a 
comparative  study  of  three  or  four  nationalities  instead  of  one. 
This  process  can  be  reversed,  of  course,  according  to  what 


440  APPENDIX. 

country  one  is  in,  as  all  the  European  countries  with  literatures 
have  written  of  one  another.  The  newspapers  of  each  land  and 
city  are  also  very  useful  in  the  way  of  letting  one  rapidly  into 
the  current  life  of  the  country. 

Learning  Languages. — It  is  a  common  impression  that  foreign 
languages  can  be  "  picked  up"  en  route  as  an  incident  of  travel. 
Adult  travellers,  I  think,  will  find  this  a  mistake,  and  their  ina- 
bility to  do  this  will  be  in  proportion  to  their  intelligence  and 
mental  vigor.  The  education  of  travel  is  a  higher  one  than  that 
of  the  grammar  book,  and  the  mind  has  too  much  on  hand  to 
grasp  with  interest  the  small  detail  of  words  and  idiomatic  rules : 
and  unless  it  does  grasp  them  with  vigor  there  is  no  retention 
of  them.  One  can  study  history,  politics,  social  science,  on  a 
flying  tour,  but  hardly  languages. 

Travelling-parties. — All  over  Europe  the  cab,  hansom,  or 
voiture  is  hired  by  the  course  or  the  hour,  as  you  please,  but 
you  pay  for  the  use  of  the  whole  cab,  and  not  for  the  number 
of  persons  carried,  as  often  with  us.  The  ordinary  vehicles 
have  seats  for  either  two  or  four.  It  costs,  therefore,  as  much 
for  one  person  as  for  two,  for  three  as  for  four.  The  fee,  also, 
at  a  gallery,  palace,  or  museum  on  the  Continent  for  one  will 
do  for  two,  and  a  party  of  four  would  pay  the  same  as  three. 
In  dining,  also,  a  whole  bottle  of  wine  costs  a  trifle  less  than 
two  half-bottles,  and  is  better ;  and  in  the  restaurants,  as  in 
our  clubs  at  home,  two  can  make  a  better  and  cheaper  dinner 
by  ordering  a  number  of  courses  of  one  portion  than  either 
could  by  ordering  separately. 

A  single  gentleman  en  route  pays  also  about  as  much  to  the 
servants  at  the  hotels — gar^ons,  chambermaids,  concierge,  etc. 
— as  he  would  if  accompanied  by  a  wife. 

Two  or  four  is,  therefore,  an  economical  party  of  travel. 

Shopping. — As  to  shopping,  which  holds  such  a  prominent 
place  in  the  minds  of  intending  travellers,  all  idea  of  it  had 
better  be  abandoned  at  once.  With  the  exception  of  certain 
local  specialties,  some  of  which  are  noted  farther  on,  the  Ameri- 
can will  get  everything  cheaper  and  better  in  his  own  country 
than  abroad.  I  do  not  mean,  to  say  that  there  is  nothing  in 
Europe  which  we  do  not  have  in  our  home  stores  at  the  same 
rates.  In  London  and  Paris  there  are  unquestionably  many 
articles  sold  cheaper  than  our  best  stores  can  afford  to  offer 
them,  but  the  stranger  will  not  get  them.  There  is  one  price 
for  home  customers  and  another  for  "foreigners"  all  over 
Europe. 

As  a  rule,  the  American  can  do  better  by  purchasing  at  home, 
where  he  is  known  and  where  it  is  the  merchant's  interest  to 
retain  his  custom,  than  by  venturing  among  the  sharpers  of 
strange  towns. 


HINTS  OF  TRAVEL.  441 

There  are  certain  special  centres  worth  mentioning,  however, 
which  are  the  homes  of  certain  manufactures,  where  really 
good  articles  may  be  had  very  cheap,  and  where  the  articles 
themselves  have  some  additional  value  as  mementos.  For 
instance,  Oxford  is  the  best  place  in  the  world  to  buy  Bibles, — 
the  King  James's  version ;  Dieppe  for  ivory-carving,  crosses, 
bracelets,  card-cases,  hair-brushes,  etc.,  etc.,  in  wonderful 
variety  of  designs  and  wonderfully  cheap,  as  the  carving  is 
a  small  home  industry,  whole  families  working  all  the  year 
round  in  their  own  dwellings  at  this  labor  and  selling  their  work 
in  their  little  village  homes ;  Genoa  for  silver  filigree-work  and 
velvets  ;  Venice  for  its  wonderful  colored  glassware  and  beauti- 
ful toys ;  the  Swiss  towns  for  wood-carving,  but  the  wood  is  apt 
to  warp  in  our  dry  climate  ;  Naples  for  raw-silk  clothing  :  Pisa 
for  small  marbles  and  casts  ;  Inverness  for  Scotch  tweeds  :  Dub- 
lin for  ulsters  and  Irish  linens;  Berlin  for  amber  ornaments; 
Italy  for  coral  ;  Scotland  for  pebble  and  cairngorm  jewelry  ; 
Brussels  for  laces;  silks  and  velvets  from  the  "Lyons  looms;" 
London  for  India  shawls  and  goods,  if  you  cannot  get  to  India ; 
Paris  and  Naples  for  kid  gloves. 

Gratuities,  fees,  vails. — A  petty  but  endless  trouble  of  the 
traveller  in  Europe  for  the  first  time  is  the  matter  of  gratuities. 
You  give  a  trifle  all  the  time  to  every  one  who  does  you  the 
least  service.  Even  for  an  apparently  friendly  word  of  infor- 
mation on  the  street  you  are  expected  to  pay  in  this  way.  In 
England  it  is  "  a  tip  ;"  in  France,  the pour-boire  ;  in  Italy,  buono 
manu, — "  the  good  hand  ;"  in  Germany  it  is  trinkgeld, — "  drink 
money  ;"  in  the  East  backshish.  It  is  not  much  money  in  any 
one  instance,  but  foots  up  pretty  well  after  an  active  day's 
work.  The  practical  trouble,  however,  is  to  know  what  to  give. 
The  inhabitants  and  the  servants  themselves  know  exactly 
what  they  are  entitled  to.  for  it  is  a  matter  of  right  just  as  much 
as  any  other  charge,  although  the  amount-  is  never  fixed  or 
published  in  any  written  form  for  the  information  of  strangers. 
They  must  learn  it  by  experience. 

We,  as  a  rule,  to  whom  the  European  measures  are  new, .give 
too  much.  Englishmen  of  rank  and  wealth  complain  that 
Americans  raise  the  costs  of  travel  wherever  they  go. 

For  the  gratuity  to  cab-drivers,  waiters  at  restaurants,  etc., 
the  recognized  European  usage  is  in  England  one  penny  for  every 
shilling  spent  in  fare  or  at  the  table,  and  in  France  and  Italy 
two  sous  for  every  franc  spent.  This  rule  disposes  of  a  large 
portion  of  the  cases. 

For  porters,  twopence  in  England  and  two  sous  on  the  Conti- 
nent for  every  piece  of  luggage  handled,  if  it  is  only  to  carry  it 
across  a  pavement.  An  umbrella  or  a  shawl  is  a  piece  as  well 
as  a  trunk.  The  driver  of  an  omnibus  cab.  or  fiacre,  as  a  point 


442  APPENDIX. 

of  etiquette  and  out  of  professional  consideration  for  the  porters, 
will  refuse  to  touch  a  piece  of  luggage  himself, — even  to  lift  it 
from  three  feet  away  into  his  vehicle. 

Visiting  at  private  houses  of  the  upper  classes  in  England  the 
servants  expect  their  tips  in  gold  coin  if  your  stay  is  over  a  day 
or  two.  The  smallest  English  gold  coin  is  a  ten-shilling  piece, 
— $2.50.  You  fee  the  footman  who  attends  your  bedroom  ;  the 
maid,  if  you  have  ladies,  who  serves  their  chambers  ;  the  butler 
who  has  charge  of  the  dining-room  and  force  of  waiters  ;  the 
keeper,  if  you  hunt:  the  groom  you  use  if  you  ride,  or  the  head 
of  the  stables  if  there  are  several ;  and  generally  any  servant 
that  you  specially  use.  One  soon  learns  by  intuition  how  to 
grade  these  fees  according  to  the  rank  of  the  servant  and  the 
length  of  his  visit.  The  guard  on  a  gentleman's  stage-coach 
running  on  a  line  of  travel  expects  a  half-crown  ;  the  guard  on 
a  public  coach  something  less. — about  a  shilling. 

On  first-class  ocean-steamers  the  gratuities  are  much  analo- 
gous to  those  in  a  gentleman's  house.  The  steward  who  waits 
on  you  at  the  table  and  the  one  who  attends  your  state-room 
will  each  expect  a  fee  in  gold — ten  shillings,  $2.50,  at  least— 
from  a  single  passenger,  a  pound  if  you  have  baths  brought  into 
your  room  every  morning,  are  particular  about  having  your 
wines  warmed  or  iced,  or,  in  short,  use  the  servants  up  to  their 
full  capacity.  When  the  passage  is  $60  to  $75  or  less,  these  fees 
are  less, — about  one-half  of  the  figures  above.  The  "Boots" 
also  looks  to  be  remembered, — about  one-half  the  amount  given 
the  steward. 

There  is  an  aristocratic  affectation  in  the  use  of  coin  in  Eng- 
land. The  fashionable  world  always  gives  its  charities  and 
subscriptions  in  guineas  and  not  pounds,  and  in  return  its  pet 
tradesmen  and  swell  shops  always  charge  in  guineas  for  their 
wares  or  work.  The  difference  is  just  one  shilling  on  the  pound, 
the  pound  being  twenty  shillings,  the  guinea  twenty-one.  There 
is  no  guinea  coin.  In  its  smaller  tips,  too,  fashion  uses  the  half- 
crown,  and  not  the  two-shilling  florin.  I  confess  that  to  myself, 
a  stranger,  the  florin  was  always  a  particularly  objectionable 
and  low-bred  looking  coin,  although  ]  could  never  understand 
the  reason  of  the  prejudice. 

The  expense  of  this  gratuity  business  in  ordinary  travel  ia, 
in  general,  rather  exaggerated.  The  sums  given  are  very  small, 
and  you  get  a  great  deal  for  them,  a  willing,  perfect,  and  kindly 
service  which  you  do  not  get  in  our  country  at  all.  To  the  trav- 
eller the  custom  is  an  annoyance  rather  than  a  burden.  It  must 
be  borne  in  mind  that  for  the  most  part  in  foreign  lands  these 
fees  are  not  largess  or  bounty,  but  a  right, — the  regular  wages 
for  specific  labor  performed.  The  porter  or  garqon  or  driver 
has  a  right  to  them  and  from  you.  And  in  the  matter  of  irnpo- 


HINTS  OF  TRAVEL.  443 

sition  these  persons  are  fully  as  much  sinned  against  as  sinning. 
No  one  who  has  travelled  much  but  has  noticed  again  and  again 
outwardly  respectable  enough  looking  people  attempting  to  steal 
away  from  servants  or  evade  the  proper  tariff  of  drivers  and 
porters. 

The  worst  feature  of  the  whole  business  is  the  demoralization 
and  want  of  self-respect  which  it  engenders  on  the  part  of  the 
classes  who  receive  their  compensation  in  this  way  as  a  gratuity, 
and  not  as  wages.  Persons  in  the  habit  of  accepting  gratuities 
and  doing  their  service  for  these  are  certainly  not  in  fit  training 
for  the  independent  responsibilities  of  citizenship,  and  in  this 
view  the  custom,  which,  without  its  European  foundation  of 
right,  is  creeping  into  this  country,  has  a  special  social  interest 
for  us. 

The  habit  of  accepting  bounties  degrades,  demoralizes,  and 
unmans  the  recipient,  and  that  fairly-earned  compensation  should 
be  systematically  paid  in  this  way — that  whole  classes  should 
be  forced  to  receive  their  return  for  their  labor  in  this  humili- 
ating form — is  but  another  proof  of  that  fatal  despising  of  hu- 
manity and  the  common  manhood  of  all  men  which  so  thoroughly 
pervades  the  European  life.  It  is  sad  to  think  that  a  very  great 
portion  of  the  people  of  Great  Britain  and  Europe  do  now  receive 
their  wages  in  this  way,  look  for  it,  and  feel  no  humiliation  in 
the  transaction.  You  can  hardly  insult  anybody  across  the 
water  by  an  offer  of  anything,  no  matter  what  appears  to  be 
his  or  their  official  position.  I  have  given  a  shilling  in  London 
to  uniformed  policemen  and  a  franc  in  Paris  to  magnificent- 
looking  hotel  managers.  A  Philadelphia  acquaintance  in  Lon- 
don had  several  hundred  dollars  brought  to  him  from  his  banking- 
house — one  of  the  largest  there — by  a  clerk  of  the  establishment, 
and  the  nattily-dressed  young  gentleman  asked  for  a  shilling 
for  his  services.  Imagine  the  consequences  of  offering  ten  cents 
to  a  conductor  on  the  Pennsylvania  Railway  who  had  shown 
you  to  your  seat  in  the  car  and  given  you  information  as  to 
when  to  get  out ;  yet  this  is  done  all  over  England  every  day, 
and  the  middle-nged  uniformed  and  respectable-looking,  guard 
hangs  around  stickily  till  he  gets  his  sixpence. 

There  is  nothing,  on  the  whole,  for  which  one  may  feel  prouder 
of  our  country,  in  contrast  with  others,  than  the  moral  stamina 
and  self-respect  of  the  American  employee,  who  would  resent 
as  an  indignity  the  gratuity  for  which  the  European  begs.  That 
legendary  fellow-countryman  of  ours  spoke  out  of  a  lull  heart 
and  with  a  just  national  pride,  who,  homeward  bound,  from  the 
bridge  of  his  Liverpool  steamer,  addressed  the  crowded  wharf: 
"If  there  is  any  man,  woman,  or  child  on  this  island  to  whom 
I  have  not  yet  given  a  shilling,  now  is  the  time  to  speak." 


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